


Some Other Way to Continue

by runaway_killjoy



Series: Skating In A Ttutu [2]
Category: Fall Out Boy, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dance, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Skating, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-21
Updated: 2014-11-09
Packaged: 2018-02-22 01:43:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 26,962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2489861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runaway_killjoy/pseuds/runaway_killjoy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Part Two of We'll dance again. I had requests for a sequel: this is it.<br/>Frank moves into the same school as Gerard and the others. At first he's amazed by the fast paced environment and the laid back teachers. He slowly gets more and more involved with risky business and background dealings are uncovered..</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

My dad drives me to the train station. He would have driven me all the way home but that’s hours and I’ll be frank, I could not think of a worse way to end a difficult month. My dad and I never really got on then he left my mom for a woman who reminds me of an aged Alison which didn’t help things. He guilted me into spending Christmas in his penthouse flat for Christmas. The Monday after my show I was placed on a train and sent to Jersey where I didn’t know I couldn’t leave until the tenth of January. I thought I’d be home for a New Year’s party Pete was throwing and I know its lame but maybe kiss Gee into the New Year. It’s stupid but whatever I know he’d have done it but it couldn’t happen because my fucking father suddenly thinks he should see me.

     We had a dry and plastic tasting Christmas dinner poorly prepared by my dad’s new woman and opened presents. My dad got me an amazing guitar and I got him 20% a suit I won in a weird raffle.

     So now I’m on a train hurtling through frost covered country. Trees look completely dead and the sky is a special colour that can only be described as cold. The train fills and empties at different intervals. I can’t believe I’m going to be two days late for starting a new school. My dad decided to keep me as long so that I’d be home hours before I had to start school, if I was in jersey. Pencey starts on a Monday unlike the Jersey schools whose principles think starting school on a Wednesday makes them unique and interesting. I can say as a past pupil of three schools in New Jersey they’re incredibly normal and boring.

      I sit back with my earbuds in and try let the misfits drown out the sound of the train, the passengers and my worry.

 

Saying I walked into that school perfectly calm would be a complete fucking lie. My stomach feels like there are drunken butterflies raving and I can hear my heartbeat really fucking loud. Students push past me as I walk in the door. I’m the kid who moved to the town a few months ago, does ballet, skates and left his school after four months after literally fucking up everything and everyone. I try to act normal but I know that won’t last long. People here are wearing an unusual array of clothes, from black jeans and band shirts to skater skirts and blazers. Some of the guys are wearing more eyeliner than some of the girls and some of the other guys are shoving the ones in eyeliner into lockers. I take a deep breath walk confidently, or what I think is confidently, through a patch of sophomores in the direction of the OFFICE sign. They all turn and stare and I realise one is Mikey. He says something to another guy and Mikey and Pete push through the students to come over to me.

     “Frankie!” Pete beams and jumps on me, hugging me shamelessly in front of the group of people they were just talking to. Mikey smiles at me before returning to his normal facial expression but I know it’s genuine. “Want us to show you to the secretary’s office?” Pete smiles, “or to the guys. I think they may have put you in Gee’s class or maybe Bert’s.”

     “Uh okay cool,” I say, eyes of the others burning through my soul, “I think I need to get to the office, get my schedule and stuff.”

     Pete nods in agreement, “Yes that’s a good plan. We’ll bring you in case you get lost in the sea of freshman who hang around the offices.”

     Before I can even think I’m being led through a group of teenagers all holding books with massive back packs. Pete says something magic and they all part. It feels really weird walking through a parted group of people. I feel like I should be in mean girls.

     Pete leads me into an office and points to a middle aged woman in a gaudy pink shirt and spectacles. I turn around to say something to him but he’s gone, Mikey visible, tall in the mix of freshman. I walk up to the secretary.

     “Hello sweetie, what’s your name?” The woman says not looking up from a game of solitaire on her computer, the cards reflected on her glasses.

     “I’m uh Frank Iero, I’m a new junior...” she just completed the hand and looks up. She smiles at me and to be honest she’s kind of scary looking.

     “Just one second sugar,” she shuffles through files in a cabinet. “You moved from riverside, yes?”

      I nod at her back, “… yea”

      She stands up tall and spins around with a little file. “Good. Gabe told me about you. I’m his aunt, Ms Saporta,” she extends a hand. “I’ve put you with people you know to the best of my ability,” she smiles as I shake her hand, “but of course you’ll make plenty of new friends here too. Bye now!”

     “Um bye…” I turn away and walk out of the office into the swarm of freshman. I take out my schedule. English is my first class this time. Room thirty one. I have no map or way of navigating this new school so I just try stumble through the freshman and search for my new locker. I find a block of green metal lockers that look like one could be mine. I sidestep along the aisle, scooting around people at their lockers I scan the numbers.

     “Frank?” I hear from behind me. I twirl around and see Gerard pulling out an earbud, leaning against a locker on the other side of the hall.

     “Hey Gee,” I say and walk over to him. “I’m back from Jersey.”

     “I see that, you’re a little late” he laughs and takes out the other earbud.

     “Yea well my dad doesn’t really think outside of Jersey,” I mutter. “I’m looking for locker 680, do you know where that is?”

     He pauses and then nods, “Yea over this way. What’s your first class?” He starts walking to a block of lockers strategically covering a window, leaving free wall space for some reason.

     “Uh English, room thirty one,” I say as Gerard points to a locker with 68 written in black metal on top of the green and a faded oval indicating an 0 was their before someone decided to pull it off.

     “Can I just look at your schedule?” Gee says pulling a sheet of paper out of my hand. He reads it nodding slowly. “We have three classes a day together. You have four with Gabe and three with Bert. You have English with Gabe, math with the three of us and French with me and Gabe…” he continues reciting our shared classes as I poor the contents of my school bag and extra first day book bag into the locker.

     The bell rings and when I turn around to ask Gee for directions to room thirty one but he’s gone. Alright it’s obvious I’m going to have to be quicker to keep up with the guys here. I stumble down a hall looking at numbers on doors until I spot Gabe running up stairs. “Gabe!” I shout and he turns around, spots me and grins, gesturing me toward him. I push through the mass of students that are flowing steadily fast down the hall. Gabe pulls me from the crush and up the stairs, “My aunt says she put you in my English class so lets go!”

     I run behind Gabe as we turn around corners until we’re at the very front of the school and in front of a class room that says “3!”. Some kid turned the 1 into !. Hilarious.

     Gabe gestures to a girl to move one desk to the left so I can sit beside him and his window seat. Gabe sits up straight and stares out the window for the entire class. The teacher either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. By his exam results he seems to be averaging a B- in English so he might not completely zone out. The English class I’m in is, thankfully, doing Othello. They are a scene ahead of where I was so I can probably catch up.

     I answer a question and give an alternative way of looking at the scene and suddenly the teacher is smiling and everyone around me have raised eyebrows and/or scowls. Maybe that wasn’t the best idea.

     I’m walking out with Gabe, laughing over a joke we carried on too long and let get so out of hand that we sound insane. “Oh god and imagine it was blue from the cold!” I laugh and Gabe makes a dick sucking motion. Some girl behind us rolls her eyes.

     Gabe grins and winks at her. She looks extremely offended and storms off down the hall. “French now, you too?” I nod. “Great!”

     I follow Gabe around a corner and up a staircase where Gerard is standing in the middle with earphones in. People push past him on both sides running to class but Gee just stands there, muttering along to his music. He takes an earbud out when we walk toward him.

     “Gabe go on to class I want to talk to Frank,” He says walking in pace with us.

     Gabe grins and bounds off on his gangly legs.

     “Yea?” I say following after Gabe. The hall is emptying very fast now. Gerard grabs my hand and starts running the opposite direction to Gabe. “Gee what-” I begin to protest.

     He smiles and whispers “trust me.”

     Hand in hand we run through halls past doors with windows and classes on inside. We’re the only ones left not in a class room. Gerard turns a corner and makes a sudden stop throwing open a door.

    “What the fuck Gerard,” I say between gulps of air. Gee is gesturing me into the small room containing mops and buckets and shelves of dusty random items like light bulbs and catalogues.

     My brain is still cloudy from the fact that its morning and that I’ve just run for the first time in forever. Gerard grins and pulls me in to the room and shuts the door.

     Before my eyes can adjust to the dark Gerard pushes me backwards into a shelf. “I missed you Frankie,” he whispers.

     “I missed you too Gee.” A hand reaches under my chin and lifts my mouth up to his. All the tension leaves me as his tongue moves into my mouth. I wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him back.

     I forget that I’m in school. I forget that I was ever in another school. I forget that this could end really badly. I forget that I should be in a classroom reciting the verb _passer_ in the future tense. I forget that I just spent a month with my dad. I forget that I have to go home and give my mom a full account on the new woman. I forget everything except how much I like the guy who’s grinding into me and pushing me into a box of crayons.

     We stay locked together for a while. Every few minutes we’d break apart and I’d kiss Gerard’s neck as he tells me how much he likes me and how much he missed me.

     I’ve slid my fingers into his hair and am pulling him closer still when light fills the small room. I gasp into Gerard’s mouth and my eyes fly open. A man in a lab coat was whistling a tune that turned into one long note. Gerard lets go of me and stands up straight, blushing. I stumble into the boxes and have to steady myself on Gerard’s shoulder.

     The man bursts out laughing. I was pale in shock but I can feel every bit of blood in my body rush to face and dye me red.

     “Afraid to come out of the closet boys?” the man laughs even harder at his own pun.

     “Mr. Jordon,” Gee mumbles looking at his feet.

     “It’s okay boys, I won’t tell,” the teacher laughs again. When he regains a sense of calm he wipes his eyes and grins, “Teenagers can be awfully homophobic so I get this. I’ll let this one slide but don’t be making a habit of it. Now I hope it wasn’t a science or maths class you missed or I may give you detention.” He laughs again and reaches into a box next to us and grabs a light bulb. He then closes the door and walks off whistling.

      Gerard sighs in relief. “What the fuck,” I hiss, “Seriously are all your teachers like this?”

     “No, just mister Jordon.” My eyes adjust and I see he’s grinning at me.

     “Oh god what?” I moan.

     “He’s your chemistry teacher, and he’s definitely going to make gay puns to you all semester.”

     I groan and Gerard laughs, pulling me into him. We kiss, keeping our hands to ourselves in fear, until the bell rings. At which point Gerard shoves me out the door and down the hall, yelling directions to my religion class at me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it took me a while to come up with an idea for the sequel and then write it but here it is, hope you enjoy!


	2. Two

That night I flew through homework and peeled carrots in the kitchen with my mom. We throw insults back and forth at dad’s Lola. We use words that if I ever used them normally I’d be killed.

     “And she wears make up all the time.”

     “Probably to hide her ugliness.”

     “Definitely, the ugly bitch.”

     After dinner I wash the dishes and mom muses over how missed I was. I nod along but I’m not really listening. My mind is miles away, with Gee in a closet, him grinding into me as I accidentally drop three staplers on us.

     I leave the kitchen with my mom smiling at the table with a cheap bottle of wine and chocolates I bought her as an “I missed you mummy, happy Christmas” present. She was so overwhelmed she wasn’t even angry that I bought alcohol.

    I skate over to Mikey and Gerard’s. Their mom answers the door and smiles at me. We make irrationally awkward small talk about my trip to New Jersey and how I’m liking Pencey. “I’m liking it very well.”

     At last Mikey appears at the top of the stairs. He shouts something across the landing and then runs down the steps, taking them two at a time. As soon as he jumps onto the floor he runs up to me and nudges me out of the doorway grinning. Seconds later Gerard appears at the top of the stairs and descends in the exact same way as Mikey.

     “Mom I don’t want to share a room with Mikey anymore. I try keep my shit together and Mikey just fucks it all up!” he has a hopeless expression and one hand on his hip. His mom rolls her eyes.

     “Get out of here Gerard,” she says standing behind him, positioned to close the door. Gerard sighs dramatically and stomps the three paces out of the house and onto the front step where I’m still standing. He and Mikey fish their boards out from behind a lawn chair. Gee kicks his board to the gate and then jogs over to it. Mikey and I follow.

     “Last one to the library… is something shitty!” Gerard declares pushing off quickly toward the main road. Mikey and I race after him. In the end I’m the “something shitty” because Mikey’s long legs send him almost twice as far as my short ass ones.

     Only Gabe is at the car park when we get there. He’s sitting on the wheelchair ramp with headphones on, humming and sliding his board side to side under his feet. He puts up a finger indicating “wait till this song is over before I can talk to you”. He begins to take his headphones off when his face lights up and he shoves them back on.

     Gerard rolls his eyes and starts skating, trying a 180 twist but failing. I laugh and decide to try show him how it’s done but end up landing on my knees, dazed. I have no idea how that failed. Gerard and Mikey grin at me and Gabe laughs really loudly, his headphones increasing his volume.

     Pete and Bert arrive while Gabe is still head banging to himself. It takes Pete skating up the rant and kicking him as he skates off the edge to make Gabe stand up. We laugh and talk and give out as we skate and everything feels so normal. It’s this sort of thing that makes me thankful I don’t live in Jersey anymore.

 

French isn’t at all as awkward as I assumed. The teacher told Gerard that if he wanted to pass this class. He then welcomed me and asked me my standard of French. When I said “bad,” he asked me to say that in French. “Je suis nul en Français.”

     “No you’re not, you just spoke French,” he booms and then starts dishing out advice on learning off the future tense. I scribble down notes. Every time I look up the teacher has something new on the board. To my right Gabe is staring out the window as in every class and Gerard is sketching a comic book character in different expressions.

     Gerard was right about chemistry. Yesterday after lunch it was okay because the teacher was gone for most of the class. Today though Gee drops me off at the chemistry lab door and the teacher spots him and winks to us. The rest of the class he makes low quality, high quantity, gay jokes. Sometimes the students laugh but most of the time these very obvious “pain in the butt” remarks.

     Then he tries to describe protons and electrons. “Okay so say electrons are all guys and protons are all girls. The guys hate each other but love the girls, wait, bad example, a lot of guys love guys too- say all the protons are fish and all the electrons are cats…” everyone grins but I feel myself sinking deeper into my chair. The class doesn’t know these are aimed at me but I do and so does the teacher.

     And then finally I go to math. Yesterday the teacher was sick so I spent the class talking to Bert, Gabe and Gerard. We managed to agree that we would all do Johnny Depp.

     Today the teacher strides into the room on extremely high heels and dumps massive set squares on her desk. _Dear god no_ I think as she writes those faithful words on the board _Geometry chapter 2._

I think I’m going to cry. The teacher begins straight away by explaining the chapter of geometry I know all too well. She explains how an exam question would be done on this chapter and then handed out a pop quiz on the last one. I spend the class answering questions on triangles. I think I might get the word isosceles tattooed on me. With a equilateral triangle above it just to piss off the gods of those three sided shapes who seem to think I need to know more about them.

     I hand up my test first.

     “Are you finished already, Mr. uh…. Iero, yes?” the teacher says as I placed the pages on her desk. It took me twelve minutes and we had twenty.

     I nod. “And you looked over it?” I nod again. Her eyebrows raise.

     “We completely covered geometry in my last school,” I whisper, everyone else is still working.

     The teacher nods slowly, “so you haven’t done any of this?” she opens her math book and flicks through two chapters of difficult looking algebra. I shake my head. “Okay,” she whispers, “I’ll correct this possibly by the end of class, I’ll see if you need extra geometry work anyway,” my face falls, “and if you don’t ill set you to work on the other two chapters.”

     A short slightly chubby blond guy with glasses walks up and places his exam on the desk. Before he can go back to his seat the teacher calls quietly, “Patrick, come here. Would you be happy to help Frank here catch up? He’s missed the first two chapters we did this year and we’re already behind so I can’t reteach it.” The guy looks at me and nods, then walks back awkwardly quickly to his seat in the front. “Patrick will help you if you want and if you have any questions I’ll probably be in this room most lunch times and after school.” At that the teacher sighs and uncaps her red pen, a sign for me to take my seat.

     The rest of the class I spend staring out the window beside Gabe’s head. I really don’t get what he finds so interesting to stare at every class.

 

I don’t go out to the guys. Gerard calls over but I say I can’t go out. I blame it on my mom who didn’t actually do anything wrong it’s just easier to say “Mom wants me in one night a week” rather than “I’m going to sit in my room trying to find x”.

     I lie on my bed and flick through the algebra. I got 98% on my triangle exam so the teacher thinks I’m good at maths. Fuck. She “trusts I’ll be able to catch up fully by the time the class is finished geometry.” So I have to do class homework, triangles, and extra super-fast catch up work trying to link x and y and lines on graphs. I really wish I didn’t have to but I’m going to ask the guys how to explain it.

     I catch Gee listening to music by his locker the next day. He’s humming and gently head banging. It makes me feel so important that he takes out not one but two earbuds when I talk to him.

     “Um Gerard, do you know the chapter you did at the start of the month?” I ask halting in front of him.

     “Uh yes. I think. I didn’t really follow it man, sorry” Gee says smiling apologetically.

     In English we do lame ass group work. I’m with Gabe though and ask him too about it. He says “I have no idea I got a D in maths”… That Patrick guy is also in my group and he looks up at me from under a fedora “Uh I can show you today if you want…”

     I nod and he nods and then we go back to the group work which is designing a poster explaining the characteristics of Iago. It’s one of those things where Patrick does most of the work, a girl called Lisa just sits there blatantly unaware of what we’re doing. Actually she probably doesn’t even know who Shakespeare was. I try help Patrick but only in phrasing it because his writing is much prettier. Gabe is the one who thinks he’s helping but doesn’t actually do anything but present it in the end. It was a very normal team effort.

     At lunch I wander around looking for the guys. I can’t spot them at all but instead find Patrick drinking from a flask of soup at the edge of a crowded table. People speak to him and he replies but all his concentration is on that soup. I sit down on the seat opposite him. “Um, Patrick? Hi. If you have time could you maybe explain the uh first part of the chapter? I can follow the first example but not the second and I can only do one of the problems…” I say standing at the edge of the table. The guy stares up at me over the rim of his flask cup.

     He smiles when I finish babbling, “Yea sure sit down. Um here I’ll get my notes…” he takes a ring binder and note book and book out of his bag and begins setting them out neatly. He has diagrams and everything.

     “So lets start with the x and y axis’s…” and thus begins my being thought half a math chapter in a half by a guy in a fedora at lunch.

 

To be honest the only good part about a party is the drink. Pete’s parties are just everyone in high school or more, but under twenty three, getting very drunk in various downstairs rooms of his house. 

     I only ever went to two parties in Jersey. One was a Halloween one my friends dragged me along to despite it being my birthday. They then got very drunk and threw up everywhere.

     The other one I went to I got very drunk for the first time in my life and made out with the schools resident “faggot” only to join him after on his pedestal as the only gay teenage guys in Jersey.

     I would still be weary of parties if Pete hadn’t thrown that brilliant one in my name on my birthday. This one is just as good. I’m sitting, well sprawling, on a living room couch making out with Gerard after we drank a bottle of vodka between us. We had some other drinks earlier but we just drank vodka very fast. Gerard’s pupils are extremely dilated. There’s barely any iris left. Mine are probably the same, spheres of impossible black with thing rings of colour.

      No one seems to care that we’re taking up the space that could fit six drunks just by making out. Pete throws a pillow shouting “get a room, but not mine” and laughing at his own hilarity. Gerard and I don’t pay any attention. I wake up the next morning with my head on his chest, lying on the couch while the floor is littered with sleeping drunken youth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I meant to update yesterday but i got to tired to functionally think of what to write so.... sorry anyone reading and i'll try update soon ^-^


	3. Three

The following week I ace all pop quizzes. Probably because the only pop quizzes I have are in math and English. I decide to meet the Patrick guy every second lunch for half an hour to go over parts of the maths course I can’t understand. Patrick is patient and probably good at teaching but I just don’t understand what the fuck x, y, c, and m have to do with each other and how I’m supposed to draw a curved line when they only give me two points. Patrick calmly walks me through it all. I stay at home two nights just working on maths trying to catch up.

    Ballet is back this evening after a Christmas break. I have been stretching and practising as often as I can so I can go straight back with strong legs. My dad was quite disappointed to see me stretching my calves Christmas morning and practising my pliés across his kitchen. He never approved of me doing ballet. While the other dads drove their kids to soccer, baseball and football my dad drove me to the local dance school. He never said it out loud but you can see it in his eyes, he wishes he had a straight son who acted like a straight son. Sucks for him.

     I follow Gabe into English. I’m so tired. I stayed up late trying to figure out a math problem that I still don’t get. Before my ass even hits the chair the teacher is handing out essays that we wrote on “an injustice”. I thought I was being very uncreative my talking about the injustice of gay marriage being illegal but apparently my “creative use of language” and “insight into the subject matter” gained me a big red A+.

     I see a guy called Dave look over at my score. “Of course Iero got an A. What did you write, some weird shit about an injustice that isn’t really an injustice or something?” the class laughs. The teacher doesn’t seem to have heard what he said.

     I look at Dave unable to reply. Like what the fuck do you say to that? Gabe pipes up beside me, “I hope he fucking did because that sounds better than anything you could write fuckbrain.” He says this without his gaze leaving the window. The class laughs again. The teacher still doesn’t hear.

     Dave rolls his eyes, “Do you write that weird shit too? No, that’s because you’re not always trying to be better than everyone else like our little A student.”

     The teacher silences the class before Gabe can retort. I just sink in my chair. This time I didn’t even try to write something alternative.

     I spend the rest of the class silently pissed off. I don’t answer any questions or put up my hand at all. I literally don’t raise my gaze off the desk.

     French is okay. I pass Gerard notes en Français as we learn the words for love and whatnot. We just say things like “I would like to kiss you” and I would like to kiss your” with an arrow to crude drawings. It was all funny until our teacher took a note I’d written about losing your Virgin Mary. The teacher read it but by the confused expression didn’t get it and threw it in the recycling then writing the French for “rude” really largely on the board. Bert just laughed at us.

     Religion with Gabe and Gerard is just so funny. Why Gerard takes that class is a wonder to me. I think he believed it would be an easy A or something. On Monday we were given the task of writing a six page essay on religions trying to convert people to be done by today. Gerard wrote one entitled “If we’re not careful we’ll turn into Catholics”. The class sniggered as he read it aloud. The teacher was less impressed. Though his essay contained a lot more facts than anyone expected the teacher sent him to the principal’s office and refused to correct his essay. Our teacher is a devout catholic from the west of Ireland. I got a B for my essay on missionaries.

     Patrick explained the problem I didn’t get at lunch. It made me feel really dumb but Patrick didn’t seem to mind terribly. I thanked him and complimented him on his fedora, making him blush deeply. I don’t particularly like fedoras but the kid wears them a lot. When I finish with Patrick I still have fifteen minutes of lunch so go outside in search of the guys. I spot Pete surrounded in girls. I decide to leave him like that.

     I walk along the back of the tennis court. I hear Gerard before I see him but he’s whispering “… don’t worry I’ll get it. Hold on I think someone’s coming…” I dip into the shadows. I don’t know why but I feel like I should let him finish the call. “Is someone there?” he says louder. I stay silent. “Never mind sorry, meet me tonight and I’ll sort you out. Thirty days okay? Thirty days or we’re never doing business again and you could find yourself in trouble. I mean it this time…”

     I feel like I’m seriously intruding. I have no idea what he means but I know waiting around till he finds me listening is a bad fucking idea so I start walking quickly and quietly back toward the school. Maybe I’ll disturb Pete and all the emo girls after all.

 

“Fluidity!” Adrienne shouts for not the first time. “It’s as if all that Christmas food has given you the grace of a turkey. Chin UP Leanne! Frank try get your left leg straighter! Maisie what are you doing?!” And so it continues. We’re doing bar work for the next month because apparently everyone forgot how to move over the Christmas break. A lot of girl’s legs have completely weakened and they collapse when on one leg or even some on two en pointe. Adrienne is so fucking pissed off. “I expect to see you all here tomorrow! Build back up your strength or none of you will make your grading in April!”

     The class ends in exhaustion. Everyone is tired and frustrated and a lot of girl’s toes bleed. It’s sort of gruesome to be honest. I seem to be the only one not complaining of leg pain. I want to rub it in that I at least kept stretched. I even had a Gerard style comment “I was stretching my calves while you girls were stretching your clothes.” I decide not to say this just so I don’t get beaten up by some fourteen year old girl in a leotard.

     My mom picks me up and I tell her all about how none of the others practised. Only to my mom to I brag like this.

     I shower and dress to go skating straight away. I’ve ditched the guys after school a lot and I want to make out with Gee.

     I leave as fast as I can so my mom doesn’t realise I haven’t eaten. I call up to Way’s but the guys have left already. I’ll probably find them at the library, if not I’ll just go home.

     I skate toward the park when I see Gerard’s skate board poking out of an alley’s shadows. My heart fills with worry. I park my board beside his and sneak down the alley in the shadows. Unarmed and short this could have been better thought through.

      I turn a corner in the alley and hear voices. In the shadows I see two hooded figures talking to a guy in a beanie. I duck to the right, behind a pile of black bags. A piece of plastic crunches under my foot. I wince. One of the hoodie guys is definitely Gerard because it’s his Iron Maiden hoodie. I can’t quite make out what they’re saying. Their voices are hushed and they’re about twelve feet away on the other side of a wall of trash.

     I barely have to crouch which is quite pathetic. Looking up I see Gerard hand the beanie guy a bag out of his backpack. He then shakes his hands with the guy and says “Thirty days.”

     And then the hooded figures start walking toward me. Fuck. The other one is Bert. They walk at an average pace. Fuck. I crouch and run around the corner, “Hey is someone there!” Bert calls.

      Nope, no. No one here. I run as fast as I can down the straight of the alley, kicking a cat in my effort to get to my board. Just as I get to it I hear Bert and Gerard turn the corner. I skate then as fast as I can toward the library.

 

Sunday Pete and I have a very stupid idea that we very stupidly go through with. We’re standing in the waiting room of the town’s only tattoo parlour. A girl covered in tattoos and Piercing stands at the counter and tells us to wait a minute before the tattoo artist is ready. We sit down and talk about what we want to get. “I think I’ll get a flame and the word hope on my chest. I dunno I’ve just wanted it for a while,” I say.

     Pete nods grinning. He shows me a picture of what he wants. I have no idea what it is so I just nod and say, “where do you want it?” Pete grins wider and dramatically drops his head.

     I laugh, “Nice man, classy. I hope it’s a fucking old man who does it for you. Makes you pull your pants right off and feels you right up.”

     Pete is about to reply when the girl pipes up, “I’m not an old man and feeling you down there will cost you extra. I’ll take one of you now.”

      I look guiltily at Pete who is still grinning. “After you brother,” he says.

      I didn’t want to go first but I find myself taking my shirt off in a little curtained off room before I can think about it. First she shaves what little hair I have off my chest. “So what do you want?” she says swabbing my chest with antiseptic.

     “Uh if you could do like a flame and the word hope?” I say. I don’t really know what a good thing to say is.

     She smirks, “Yea I could do that. How big? What colour?”

     I feel strangely flustered. “Um about this size,” I draw a circle on my chest with my finger, “and in black please.”

     She nods, “cool.” Firstly she draws on my chest with a black sharpie. It’s cold and damp and feels really weird. Yea I’ve drawn on my skin before just not _there._ I snort a laugh at the thought of Pete getting his. “Hold still” the woman says.

     When she has it drawn on she asks if that’s what I want, holding up a mirror so I can see it. “Yea,” I say, rather quietly, so I nod vigorously too. She smirks and takes out a clean needle and fills it with black ink.

     “If you think about something other than the needle it won’t hurt as bad. If you think about the needle it’ll sting like a bitch. Oh you and your friend are over 18 yea?” She says squirting a bit of ink as a test. I nod. “Great, don’t cry.”

      In an effort to not think about the black ink piercing my skin so it can live forever on my chest, I accidentally end up thinking about Gerard and Bert in the alley. I don’t want to think about what they were doing but I’m pretty sure I know. There’s always lots of drugs at Pete’s parties…

     _You can’t assume that you’ve only been to two_ I try tell myself but come on that was fucking suspicious, seeing that in the alley and hearing Gee on the phone.

     No matter what it is what the fuck am I to do? Confront him? Pretend I don’t know? Maybe ask him if he knows someone who can get me cocaine to see if he says “Yea I’ll give you some after Math”?

     I leave the parlour with a bandage over my new tattoo and a pain that feels like I’ve had a chest skin transplant. I don’t think that’s even a thing. Pete grins up at me from his seat. “Can I see it?”

     “Later” I assure him as he walks off to get tattooed under his belly button.

     I sit on a chair and flick through an outdated issue of Alternative Press rock magazine. Looking at an article on Möterhead I have only decided three things; I’m not allowing myself to regret this tattoo ever, I’m not letting myself get fat and grow man boobs that will stretch this, and I’m not asking Gerard about his dealings I’m going to wait till he tells me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay guys so here is another update! One thing, I'm Irish and our education system is WAY different to the American one and I'm just wondering if I got this okay? This whole series I've basically been writing about something I don't really know about (skating, ballet and american society) so I have done a bit of research but either way i hope this is okay :) thanks for reading!


	4. Four

February comes in a shower of sleet. February here apparently is colder than January. I walk to school through a sleet storm. Mom offered me a lift but if I took it I’d be standing around for ten minutes before they opened the school gates. Mom has a meeting and no matter the weather Pencey has a strict opening time. Gabe said he was stuck out in the tail of a hurricane while the janitor’s silhouette was visible in the window, drinking coffee while Gabe got hit by branches and slates broke at his feet. So instead of standing around for ten minutes in the sleet alone, waking at like six _or_ sleep a while longer and walk through the sleet alone for twenty five minutes. As a car splashes an icy puddle of I-really-fucking-don’t-want-to-know at me I begin to regret this as my choice.

     I arrive in the doors practically frozen. Ice crystals have begun forming on my coat which is soaked through. My black skinny jeans that were already stuck to me have become practically a new layer of skin. Only this one isn’t moveable.

     I stomp through a crowd of sophomores, my socks and shoes so wet that they slop and squelch under me as I grumble through younger, taller teenagers. “Frank?” Pete pipes up from the mass of bodies.

     “Yes?” I snap, my head shooting up.

     “Jeez chill bro,” he mutters pushing past a girl with dyed pastel pink hair. I just wanted to… I actually don’t know, never mind.” He peels back into the cluster of sophomores. I storm off toward my locker. Gerard looks at me as I pass him but I’m so pissed off I don’t stop to talk. I just feel so uncomfortable and cold.

     I sit in English completely peeved. The teacher asks me a question and I spit the answers and I feel the whole class’s shock at my venom. Oh what the fuck ever.

     I storm angrily through French and the following classes to lunch. I’m still pissed off even though I’m relatively dry now I just feel uncomfortable. I move up in the canteen line as someone skips me “What the fuck! Get behind the queue douchebag,” I growl. Dave and a guy called Troy turn around, eyebrows raised.

     “What did you just say Iero,” Dave growls.

     “Get over yourselves and get the fuck in line,” I growl. I regret the words as I breathe them. _Shut up Frank,_ I think to myself. Strangely they seem to concede. Troy throws his arms up in sarcastic resigning. He’s a clumsy fuck and while his arms fell again he smacked a tray out of some kid’s hand. The kid sighs and picks it up. Troy skulks off.

     I eat lunch on my own at a one person bench. I have no idea whose idea it was to have a one person lunch bench in the canteen, facing a bin. After I eat my lone lunch I decide I should probably find the guys and apologise for being pissed off.

     I throw out the last of my spaghetti which has disturbing jellified and turned into a beige paste at the end of my school grade plastic bowl. I walk, hands jammed in my pockets, into the halls. I’m pretty sure I know the school now but I still always get confused between the hall that ends in the music class room and the band room. In an attempt to get to the band room I find myself facing a classroom with a piano shoved in front of the emergency exit. Sighing, I turn myself around only to see Troy and Dave blocking my view of the otherwise empty hallway. Fuck.

     “You think you’re the shit don’t you Frank? Think getting an A in everything means you’re so smart. Think you’re so much better than us. But look you can’t even find your friends,” Troy smirks while Dave purrs this probably well practice speech.

     “Do you want to stop fucking with us Iero?” Troy smiles, showing perfectly aligned white teeth. I found it! The only good attribute the asshole has, his teeth!

     “I’m not fucking with you, now, please stop obstructing my path to the other part of the school?” I say taking a daring step forward.

     Dave dramatically sighs. “Frank, you don’t get it,” he shoves me really hard. Way harder than I could have anticipated and I stumble back into the door of the music class room. I slump down against it without thinking. My knees lock and I feel like I’m stuck forever in squat mode. “We’re not bullies or anything Frank. We just hate people who think they’re better than us. They’re the bullies, Frank. We don’t want to hate you but you need to get over yourself and stop acting like your shit don’t stink.”

     I have no idea how to retaliate. No smart or sarcastic comebacks. I just stand their dumbfounded. Troy gives me his hand and pulls me forward, cracking my knee joints. “Look Frank just don’t be an asshole and we won’t be assholes,” he says shoving me down the hall. I stumble over my own feet as I make my escape down the hall.

 

I get a heap of test results on Thursday. It’s like all the tests they gave us were corrected for the same day.

     Maybe they were, Pencey’s teachers are all very chummy.

     I get an A in my English essay and in an English quiz she gave us on Tuesday. Dave turns awkwardly in his chair and sees them. His eyes narrow. “What the fuck Iero, I thought I asked you not to act so superior.” He then twists himself back into his seat. I sit up tall and glance over. He got a C in his essay and a D in the quiz. He twists all of a sudden in his seat and catches me looking at his desk. Fuck. Fuck, fuck. He glares at me. “Trying to see what everyone else got? Trying to see how much better everyone else got?”  
     A few faces turn to me, brows either furrowed or raised. I hear some mumble things like “dickhead” and “that’s so mean”.

     I shake my head, “that’s not what I was doing!” I protest.

     “No, no. You were just having a peak in. You happy? Better than everyone else yet?” Dave asks looking genuinely hurt.

     “Don’t be a tool, that was hardly what he was doing,” Gabe says, his eyes never leaving the window. “Don’t have to flatter yourself, I’m sure Frank gives more fucks about how your chair legs are uneven then about your test. For someone who hates “cocky bastards” you sure like to have all the attention.”

     A few of the staring faces relax and turn back to facing the teacher who is sorting through papers on her desk, searching for some student’s essay. The rest of the students laugh along with Gabe.

     Confused at how that all just turned on him, Dave hunches his shoulders and turns around to scowl down at his papers. I look over to Gabe and mouth a “thank you” but he can’t see me, he said all that still staring out the window. I glance down at the big red B and C+ on his papers. It baffles me how he does so well without looking in the class room from the beginning to the end. I sit quietly for the rest of the class.

     I get all As and Bs in the rest of the tests I get back. English class is repeated in Math, Chemistry and music where I get As that bother Dave and Troy. After school I’m walking toward my locker when Troy shoves me full force into a trash can which knocks over under my weight and spills me and its contents across the hall. When I find my dignity amongst the banana peels and sandwich bags I push myself up onto my feet and see Pete shoving Troy and calling him various things. No one’s laughing but only Pete seems to protest it.

     I dust myself off and kick the trash back into its can. I try to calmly lift it up but I’m shaking with shock and anger. When Pete is done giving Troy shit for knocking me over he comes over and asks me if I’m okay. Troy shouts at people who are staring and marches proudly off. He obviously doesn’t take shit from sophomores very well. Pete walks with me back to my locker.

     “Look man I can’t have you getting beat up here,” he says. “You’re my friend and it’s not okay. Gee has been telling Mikey how you keep… showing off that you know everything in class. It’s okay I know you don’t mean to but if you could, like, tone it down… You know you don’t need an A in every small class test, only the big ones at the end count. So if you could just cool it you’d make life a lot easier on yourself.” #

 

My mom is delighted with my results. She “can’t believe how my scores have increased since Jersey” and how “this new school must be nurturing my love for learning and unlocking a whole new level to my knowledge” and such bullshit. She phones my grandparents right in front of me and blatantly brags for a half hour before hanging up and deciding to celebrate my As with wine I’m not aloud. After a glass she promises to make a delicious meal and sends me to Walmart in the sleet with eight fifty to buy some cake. I trudge on through the ice water as it stings the hell out of any exposed skin and soaks my coat and scarf. I don’t know why I bother. Maybe if I walked naked I’d be arrested and get to sit in a nice warm police car. I won’t be skating with the guys today. Or the next day or the next day probably. The sleet soaks the roads and paths and the night freezes it leaving the town a shiny, cold death trap.

     I slip at least six times on my way to Walmart and at least eleven on my way back. The cake arrives to my mom unharmed but I’m cold and bruised. I go upstairs to shower and do homework until mom calls me for food; chicken curry that she made from scratch. It tastes miles less salty than the packet ones and a little bit too bitter but as a first attempt my mom seems very pleased. I tell her it’s delicious and I love it and before I know I’m being fed a second portion by an ecstatic Linda Iero.

     I get into bed that night freezing cold and trying to sort through my thoughts. I was texting Gerard and he agrees with Pete that I should “tone it down” and maybe not get straight As in English and Math or that I should at least stop speaking in class. Bert tells me that people keep trying to bitch about me to him and that a lot of people like me and think that I’m “quirky” but a lot think I’m just weird. I have a year and a half left in school. I could be a good student, have very few friends and struggle to live outside of the classroom to ensure a good grades and that I’ll get good reports and recommendations into a good college, have my mom delighted and get shoved around by gradually more people. Or I could be a social butterfly and survive school like Gabe, never do any extra work or any effort, get okay grades, have friends and ultimately not get pushed around only to get into an okay college and get an okay job and live the rest of my okay life in an okay way.

     I hate that these are my choices.

 

We have a free math class. Our teacher is in but just, like, forgot to come to class. Everyone is so busy talking and laughing and playing various beat drop songs to notice me and Patrick beginning the next algebra chapter. I understand the last one but if you were to quiz me on it the best I might get is a B. I hope that will be enough because it was a long ass chapter and everyone else had started the last geometry one. Patrick gets frustrated trying to explain something I realise is very simple but I just can’t get my brain around.

     When I think I may kind of get it we attempt a question. Patrick works with me but I question his logic, which makes no sense to me, and he questions mine. In the end we have to give up.

     “Look, Frank, I just know that this is how you do it okay!” he says loud enough that people in the seats right next turn in surprise to see that the little fedora wearing guy has a voice.

     “Oh sorry master of algebra! I didn’t mean to, you know, _try_ answer the fucking question too. I’ll never go against your all knowingness again!” I laugh coldly.

     He sighs and groans in frustration. After another quick attempt he slams his pencil down and stomps to his desk where he searches his little messenger bag school bag for a copy with the question in it. He claims they had that question for homework but the way he answered it was fucking stupid. While he’s gone a guy called Alec walks past me on his way back from sharpening a pencil. He drops a note nonchalantly on my desk.

     Patrick is still storming through his bag and flicking through copies in the front of the room so I see no reason not to open it now.

     _I’ll pay you eight dollars every day you do my geometry homework._ Well that was unexpected. Alec is a quiet kid who seems to be pretty rich. I mean he drives to school in a 2004 bmw and he lives closer than I do. That’s also quite an expensive first car. He doesn’t mean to show off his wealth but some people are just so obviously able to afford things like butcher’s steak for dinner while everyone else eats Walmart’s frozen casseroles. Eight dollars a day is probably nothing to him but to me…

     Patrick comes back waving a copy where the problem we were doing is solved using his method. He has a smug smile but proceeds to show me why his way is correct rather than rub it in.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys sorry I didn't update yesterday! I actually had no idea how long this chapter would be compared to the others. Thanks everyone who read and left kudos and thanks for reading this far! It means an awful lot <3


	5. Five

Eight dollars _can_ go a long way if you make it. Like after collecting eight dollars a day for five days I’m able to afford a bottle of bourbon for me and Gerard to share in his basement Friday night as well as have some money for other things like food whenever I feel like food. Being forty dollars richer just for doing someone else’s triangle work for a week was a good trade off.

     Gerard and I cuddle and make out in his basement while drinking an entire bottle of bourbon when I get back from a tiring ballet lesson. It was all barre work and trying to strengthen legs again which included me picking up a lot of girls who are taller than me. I feel so weak and tired that a weekend of not doing math is ideal.

     Gerard snuggles closer into me after taking a swig. He nudges his head into my neck and starts kissing up under my chin and toward my ear. I sit there and take another swig from the bottle. I’m never sure what’s right to do in these situations. “Just going with it” only works when I’m very drunk so I think continuing to down the bottle is the best course of action.

    After a while my vision becomes super blurry and I find myself going with it. Gerard lifts the bottle to his mouth forcing me away from his mouth and down to his neck and collar bones. He drops the bottle aside and presses down on my shoulders, forcing me to lie down on the couch, half off. He lies half on me and slowly starts grind into me. I move back against him only because if I don’t he’ll push me off the floor.

     We kiss hungrily and at some point I take Gerard’s shirt off and he takes off mine. I didn’t even realise he’d unbuttoned my jeans and they were down at my knees until a knock came at the door and all of a sudden Gee is unsteadily jumping to his feet and I’m struggling to sit up straight and pull my pants up.

     “Fuck guys,” Mikey says walking in. He seems to lift his hand up to his eyes. Gerard laughs and I grin. “Did you drink the whole fucking bottle?” he groans.

     “I think so,” I grin, “or else I’m this fucking drunk on air.” Gerard grins and falls on the couch as he tries to walk over. I laugh at him. He laughs at himself.

     Mikey makes a distressed noise. “Frank your mom is here,” he hisses.

     All laughter stops. My heart stops. “Shit,” I slur. “Shit,” I say again, trying this time to control the slurring, “Moikey you gotta help me… will you make my mom go home.”

     Gerard starts sniggering, “you called him Moikey!”

     Mikey rolls his eyes. “I’ll send her home and tell her you’ll be there in a while she’s talking to my mom and said she wants you to go home.”

     “Can’t he have a sleep over?” Gee grins and pushes himself closer to me.

     Mikey sighs, exasperated. “No, Gee.”

     “Awww,” Gerard moans and then starts kissing me.

     Mikey makes an annoyed sound and mumbles, “Be ready to leave in less than ten minutes, Frank, I’ll walk you home.”

     Gerard grins to me as his brother leaves. “Maybe not tonight but would you like to sleep over?” he asks grinning.

     Even fuzzed to fuck and drunk my mind panics at this. I’m a virgin. I don’t want to be a virgin. I feel really not manly so I laugh and say “Yes!”

     Gerard smiles widely at me even though his eyes are drooping and his matted greasy hair is falling in front of his face. He’s recently re-dyed it but not cut it so it hangs over his eyes in a jet black mop.

      When he is finished grinning down at me he nudges me over and we lie awkwardly intertwined for eleven minutes before Mikey comes in again to walk me home. He has to really hold me up as I slip and stumble down the deathly icy path. I land on my ass in fits of laughter twice in the short distance between the houses.

     Mikey opens my front door with my key when I fail to. I stumble up the stairs and hear Mikey shout something like “I’m just getting something Frank loaned from me, good night Ms Iero!” and my mom reply something I can’t hear properly. I strip completely and sleep naked.

 

The sun streams through my open curtains as I roll over. My clock says it’s eight am. Way too early for a Saturday. I roll over and I can literally feel all the pain in the world that lives there roll with me. I think I’m going to cry. I’ve had hangovers but man this is special. I haven’t even sat up yet and it feels like I have miners in my brain, chiselling at the edges of my head. I think I drank too much too fast and with no water.

     I close my eyes to let the pain behind my eyes ease, it’s like the light has targeted the sore part of my brain there. I didn’t think light could even reach there.

     When I wake again its thirteen minutes to midday. I guess it’s too late to go for ballet. _Oh what a shame_ I think sarcastically. The white pain returns, no more thinking.

     When I find the will to move I walk over to close the curtains in blinding pain. It’s only when I’m at the window looking down at horrified joggers do I realise I’m completely naked. I close the curtains quickly and go in search of clothes. Every time I move a new landslide of pain tumbles through my head.

     When I get to the kitchen there’s a not from my mom telling me to get myself to ballet and that she is gone to join the gym. Well that was unexpected. I make myself brunch and take pain killers with enough water to drown a fish.

     I’m flicking through channels when the doorbell loudly interrupts a programme on humming birds I switched on to.

     I push my way blindly to the door, my head pounding with the sudden effort of walking. I swing the door open to see Ray standing smiley in the doorway. Behind him Bob stands with his arms folded and a no more happy expression than ever.

     I’d forgotten I was going to hang out with them today. “Bob said you’d be at ballet, but said you’d be finished,” Ray explains sidling past me into my sitting room.

     I rub my temples, “Hey guys, how’s it going?”

     “Okay,” Ray chirps as I close the door behind Bob. “Miss you in chemistry.”

     Bob grunts and says, “Yea, miss having you around the school Iero.”

     I smile despite the muscles in my face hurting, compliments from Bob Bryar, or any niceties are rare as happy memories with my dad. “So how’s the school been coping without me?”

     “Brendon is ruling the school, literally,” Ray says, smiling. “It’s weird. Alison has been literally fighting everyone yet people still like her. Well, fear her. Madison is still super against her and asked Brendon to a dance tonight as like a hot poker in the eye to Alison who has been waging war on him. I don’t get what her hate for him is. I think it’s because people genuinely like him. He’s a good guy. We’re also winning in the baseball league and two teachers got fired for making out in the school.”

     Oh well that was unexpected. “Which teachers?”

     “Mr. Andrews and Mr. Carter,” Bob says, “Brendon is running a campaign to get them back. He thinks they wouldn’t have lost their jobs if they were straight.”

     “I think they would still have lost their jobs,” Ray says looking sad.

     “Maybe they wouldn’t have lost their jobs, just, like, got the teacher equivalent of getting suspended,” I offer. They both nod contemplatively.

     The next three hours is spent with us talking and complaining about school and the people in it. Apparently we all agree that Ellie is very nice. Just as we agree this, scarily, my mom comes home red faced with Ellie’s mom and Ellie. My mom takes me aside and asks for me to entertain Ellie as she has a conversation with her mom.

     The four of us sit uncomfortably in my living room. “Sorry again about your hair. Actually I don’t think I ever properly apologised,” I say trying to break the silence but only getting more uncomfortable.

     “It’s okay. I actually like the black, I’ve been keeping it this colour,” she says.

     So the following hour passes not with playing Halo like I’d envisioned when I invited the guys over but with a collective bitching session about Alison. At first it was very light but it ended with us all very pissed off and complain about every little thing. “And she thinks she’s so good at art but I got an A and she got a B and then wouldn’t talk to me for a month. It’s not my fault that she isn’t as good as she thought.”

      Ellie’s mom comes in and tells her they’re going home now. It was their new year’s resolution to join a gym together to “tackle the tummies together” and to spend more time together. Ellie says she had no idea my mom was joining in but she doesn’t mind. Only she says she wished she could go home and take a nap sooner. Ray, Bob and I agree Ellie is the only popular girl in our school we like.

     It isn’t long before the guys go home too.

 

I’ve never been sent to the principal’s office before. I mean I’ve done my fair bit of bad things, in Riverside especially, but never got in trouble. The most I got was detention for constant tardiness or not having homework done or once for shoving back a guy who shoved my down a stairs. I was seriously hurt but he was the quarter back so I got detention and he got to continue shoving short kids down stairs.

    Now I sit in absolute terror next to Alec. I’m not sure how the teacher found out. Maybe it was Alec’s perfectly correct homework and D on his quiz. Maybe it’s me being seen at two lockers every day. Maybe someone told on us. Who knows, and at the moment who cares? I just hope the principal doesn’t ring my mom because she’s still super happy about me getting As.

     “This is not okay boys,” the principal says sitting down opposite us. “In fact this is very wrong. Alec, how are you supposed to learn if you pay people to do your work? You’re getting yourself into a very bad habit later in life. Frank, you must know that this is bad. It’s against school rules to do anyone else’s work.” He seems to struggle then to think of more things to say. He says another few sentences but I zone out. All I get from them are the words “bad”, “not right” and “detention at lunch and after school for a week, starting tomorrow”. Fab. Starting Wednesday I’ll be kept in the delinquents room.

     We both apologise and the principal writes something on official paper and slips it into two files. Fuck, those must be our permanent records. “You can go now,” the principal says and waves us away.

     Outside the door Alec sighs, “Sorry man, here’s ten bucks for taking half the shit,” he says and then walks off. I’m not going to complain.

     There is one minute left before the lunch bell rings so I decide to run to the cafeteria and get lunch before everyone else comes. I order just as the bell rings and sit down facing the door so I can see the guys as they come in.

     The only thing is, they don’t. I’m finished eating and now just sitting alone on a bench for six people. Out of the corner of my eye I see Patrick go to sit on a four person lunch bench by himself. I feel a sudden pang of “that guy is too nice to sit alone all the time” and call him over. He seems very grateful and eats as I tell him what happened. I feel like he’s a very trust worthy guy, like he can hold everyone’s secrets in his fedora.

     “Oh,” he says taking a bite from his sandwich, “Alec asked me to do his geography homework before. I did it for a week and he paid me but I felt wrong so I stopped.”

     I turn this over in my mind. Alec is really very generous with his abundance of money. I wonder what his family does.

     “His dad’s in some risky business,” Patrick mutters, answering a question I hadn’t posed.

     “Oh yea?”

     “Yea. This town is worryingly into drugs,” he whispers the last word. “I’m not saying that’s what his dad does I’m just saying that that’s a possibility since he doesn’t seem to work but has a big house, nice cars, and a lot of dealings with the youth of the town.” Patrick dusts off his palms. “You seem like a nice guy, Frank,” he’s gone all shy and bashful again, “just be careful who you hang out with because there’s a lot of underground shit here and a lot of people involved.” With that he takes a final drink from his water bottle and walks off to throw his sandwich bag in the bin. That was all very unsettling.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yea so here you go! I've had nothing to do today but read and write so i have the next chapter almost fully written so you can expect it tomorrow! :3 please let me know what you think and thanks for reading :*


	6. Six

I sleep through my alarm the next morning. My mom is down stairs drinking a cup of coffee while I throw bread in the toaster dressed only in underpants. “Agh, Frank! Dress and hurry up I’m leaving in five minutes,” she says averting her eyes. Granted, my underwear is kind of old and has kind of a lot of holes in it.

     I throw my clothes on, accidentally putting on my plain grey tshirt backwards and having to take it off and put it back on while tripping down the stairs blindly. I kick my school bag down in front of me, I think I will fall and die. This will be my end. My mom stands by the door tapping her watch. I grab the dry slices of burnt toast and shove one in my mouth as I pile into the car, dropping crumbs down my front.

     I choke as my mom gives me a lecture on how I don’t care if she’s late and if this happens again she’ll leave without me. Oh what the fuck ever mom.

    She drops me at the school gate and drives off literally before I the door is closed. It slams as she pulls out dangerously fast on to the road. Good thing literally no one lives here or drives past this road at 9:03.

     I slip and stumble up the icy death trap that is the school car park. I slide on a step leading to the main doors. My hands come up to protect me as I land hard on top step. My hands slide across the course ice made rougher by sand and salt. The school’s attempt to stop people slipping is to put sand on the platform where the door is but literally nowhere else. I try stand up, a tad wobbly. Both my palms are now red raw and parts are skint. I rub them gingerly off my jeans as I take careful steps toward the school. Its march in almost a week, I wish the ice would just give up.

     The teacher sighs and says “tardy Mr. Iero,” before gesturing to some girl to continue reading from her copy of Othello.

     “… O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; it is the green eyed, err, monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on,” the teacher stops her their just as I sit.

     “Highlight this quote! It is one of the most famous and you can use it in most exam answers when referring to the plotline. I encourage you to use it when doing comparative studies too. Now, can anyone tell me what Iago means by this?”

     Half the class turns to stare at me. Dave raises a daring eyebrow, willing me to give him a reason to call me a cocky bastard. I decide I’ll stay silent.

     The teacher seems shocked no one gets this really obvious question. “Oh come on,” she says making a wide arm gesture, “It’s not even really a metaphor!”

     I feel the answer rise in my throat like bile but I say nothing. The teacher sighs dramatically, “If you can’t even answer this… you’ve exams in a few months and if I don’t see massive improvement in your results I’ll have to talk to half of you about moving down a class.”

     I see Dave stiffen in front of me. I’m not too worried, my grade in this class is good but I can see a lot of nervous expressions around me as the teacher begins to explain the quote. I just hope moving people down will entice Gabe to look in the classroom.

     It doesn’t.

 

I sit at the lunch table, scratching my skinned palms. The guys are shovelling in food while Pete talks about a huge party he’s got us all invited to on Friday. “It’s this guy I know, Josh, you know him? Anyway his parents are away and they own this detached house on the outskirts and I invite him to all mine even though he’s twenty so he’s invited me but says I can only bring two to six people so I’ll bring you guys. Other than you, Mikey, our form is full of immature idiots who’d ruin my chances of getting invited ever again.”

     “What about Robby?” Mikey says, scraping up the last of his cafeteria standard grey lasagne.

     “What about him?” Pete says with his water bottle in his mouth. He complains about others maturity as he dribbles trying to drink and talk at once. I shake my head at him. “What? He’s a good friend and everything but I don’t trust him around older girls.”

     Mikey grins and pushes his food tray away. Gerard pics something out of his teeth and Bert says, “Will we need to bring something?” Gerard’s head shoots up and stares at him like he’s telling him to stop.

     “Uh I don’t know,” Pete hesitates, “There’ll be a lot of drink their like… but you can bring more if you want.”

     “I can get more vodka?” Bert says, eyeing Gerard.

     “Like you need more vodka,” Gabe laughs.

     I spend the rest of lunch with eyebrows raised at Gerard, begging for him to explain without actually saying anything. He notices but pretends not to. I feel like I’m not in some big not funny private joke.

 

Friday I get a lift out to the house with the guy’s friend from Pete’s. This area is really weird. It’s like an unfinished suburban hell. Paved streets, white picket fences and a lot of building sites free of houses. There’s actually only four buildings here on a straight road and two of them seem to be unoccupied. We get out of the guys car, five of us squashed in a backseat. It’ was degrading that I ended up sitting on Gee’s lap but I don’t care too much because I can feel him hard just behind where I’m sitting. I blush as we make awkward conversation with the random twenty year old dude.

     Apparently he shares a music taste with us so we just compared favourite Iron Maiden and Misfit songs for the twelve minute car journey.

     I still haven’t been to that many parties but they almost feel natural now. I follow Pete and the others into the house. Within seconds I have a plastic cup of vodka and coke and am being introduced to Josh.

     “Yes I still live with my parents but what the fuck ever man, I mean look best place for a party!” he says loudly to Pete over the music. Pete just grins and downs his drink. “Wanna do shots with some of these guys? Before they drink all the straight tequila,” josh says beckoning Pete, Mikey and I into the kitchen. Gabe is talking to a giggling already drink girl by the window. I can’t spot Bert and Gerard but we all split up after getting a drink, Pete just wanted to introduce me and Mikey was always awkwardly next to him anyway.

     I follow him through the held open double door to the kitchen. Two guys and a girl are standing around an island counter as one guy unsteadily pours the clear drink into plastic shot glasses. “Wanna join in Josh?” the girl calls with a flirty and drunk expression.

     Josh grins, “let me and these guys have two rounds to… catch up?”

     The guy spills more tequila into another shot glass. I drink the last of my vodka and coke before we each pick one shot up and knock it back. It burns and tastes incredibly vile. _Don’t spit it out you’ll ruin any chance you have of being cool_ I think to myself. I hold my breath as I put the little plastic glass down.

      Pete shakes his head and grins as Josh grabs the bottle and pours another round. “On three this time. One, Two, Three!” We choke it back again. It’s in burning the hell out of my throat, numbing my tongue and fuzzing my brain that I wonder why the fuck people drink.

      My brain begins to feel the effects as the last of the bottle is poured into everybody’s shot glass. Three, Two, One and I think I can go back to normal drinking but the girl produces another bottle of tequila. The following shots all blur in together but in the end no one’s hand is really steady enough to not spill the tequila and the girl, Lily, ended up drinking it off the counter.

     After that bottle we’re released back in to the rest of the big house. I lose Pete and Mikey immediately and find myself in one of the two sitting room type places sitting on a couch with a new drink. I don’t remember getting it or being given it. It probably isn’t even mine.

     There’s two guys next to me on the couch and three girls kneeling on the other side of a coffee table. They all introduce themselves to me but I can’t hear them over radiohead being blasted from speakers next to me. The only name I hear is “Dylan”. “Hi, I’m Frank!” I slur/shout. The room is small and the walls are cramped with books and bookshelves. There’s a fireplace which’s mantle is decorated in photo frames and golf trophy’s. So this is upper class Middle America.

     Another guy turns up and the friend group I’ve found myself next to greets him ecstatically. “Oh sorry man, fuck, did I take your place?” I say up at the new guy. He looks really off his head.

     “Nah, nah it’s cool man,” he says and falls down on the ground next to me. He then very conspicuously takes a bag out of his jacket pocket that’s filled with white powder. _Shit_ I think _that’s hardly washing powder._ The guy spills it in a little pile on the table and a girl claps her hands together in impatient excitement. The guy takes out a piece of card and starts lining it up. “Would you like some Frank?” Dylan shouts over 1979 by the Smashing Pumpkins.

     “Uh no thanks, I’ll pass,” I manage to say.

     “Suit yourself, this is good proper stuff though,” the already high guy says from the floor next to me and scoops the line he’d done out for me into the lines next to it.

      I stand up and say “I’m going to go find my friend, it was nice to meet you,” in my most relaxed way. The girls wave and the guys shout something that was probably “see ya” but sounded Spanish.

     I stumble back into the hall. I really want to find Gerard now.

     The hall is actually pretty cramped and when I swing open a door assuming it’s the bigger sitting room only to find the stairs down into the basement. The light’s on so I start slowly slinking down the stairs, leaning heavily on the banister so I don’t fall down. I seriously can’t even see straight at all anymore. This is why people drink I guess, so they don’t have to do or be correct anymore.

     I find Gerard, Gabe and Bert sitting with a bunch of other older people. They’re laughing while music is blaring. Gee spots me and jumps up.

     Suddenly he’s running the short few steps between us and jumping at me. We slide down the coarse wall and sit together at the foot of the stairs. No one pays attention to us sitting on the floor. After a while we start to kiss and someone steals my drink.

 

I wake up lying on Gerard. I panic for a minute not sure where I am or why I’m here. My brain had prepared me to wake up either at home or in Josh’s house somewhere but this is neither. I blink and realise I’m in Pete’s basement bedroom. Why does everyone in this town have a basement?

     I’m fully clothed thankfully but I can’t move in case I wake up Gerard. My mind races, fighting the fact I’m still a little drunk, to try remember why I’m here.

     And then I remember. Last night around three am the cops came and broke up the part. A few people were taken off to the station for possession of drugs and someone was sent to the hospital to have their stomach pumped. Pete’s cousin gave us a lift home while we were all incredibly drunk and tried to silently put us to sleep downstairs. He said he won’t tell anyone as long as it never comes up. I look around and see Mikey asleep on a yoga mat his glasses at his side. I know I’m still drunk but not too drunk because my vision has been restored. I snuggle back into Gerard and decide to sleep again so I can wake up extra tired and hung over.

    

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's another chapter :) I won't be updating tomorrow because I'll be at a concert :3 I, unfortunately, never got to see MCR in concert and I guess I never will... Anyway I'll update next chance I get but Halloween is the time of year I pretend to have a social life so I may not be able to for a while ^-^


	7. Seven

I walk in my front door around midday. My head feels like there’s an army of monkeys playing the bongos and my stomach is turning violently. Even the light reflected on the ice crystals in the grass hurts my eyes so I can’t even look down as I make my way home.

     I close the door, with a painfully loud bang, and say “I’m home!”

     I can see my mom sitting in the kitchen counter with the door open. She’s on the phone and her expression is one of horror. She says something into the phone holding up a finger as if indicating “Wait a sec” and she drops it on the counter, sprinting toward me. “Are you okay?” she gushes holding both my cheeks and looking at me, eyes wide with terror.

     “Yes I’m perfectly fine?” I say. What a terrible time for my voice to break. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

     “There was a terrible big party that the police broke up just outside of town. It was full of drugs and alcohol and my friend Jessica’s husband is one of the cops who broke it up and he says he saw your friends there,” her voice is trembling.

     I don’t know what to say so I just stand there looking shocked and possibly guilty. My mom’s eyes narrow. Fuck. I’m so bad at lying and pretending and acting casual. I’m so glad we weren’t confronted by the guards because even though I had no involvement with drugs my “acting casual” would get me locked up.

      “To your room, I’ll speak to you in a minute,” she hisses, dropping her hands dead and storming back into the kitchen. The slam of the door almost knocks me out with pain.

      I sit uncomfortably on my bed for about half an hour. The suspense quite frankly kills me. I’d rather she came up here and screamed at me now rather than have me anticipate it.

     When my mom finally appears in my doorway, hands on hips, I fear for my life. “You were there weren’t you?” she growls.

     “Yes but I wasn’t involve-”

     “Shh,” she cuts me off.

     “I didn’t-”

     “Shh shh.”

     “Mom, I prom-”

     “Shh Frank. I don’t want excuses. I don’t want you there involved with drugs and alcohol. Even if you didn’t take any drugs I do _not_ want you around people who are. I just want to protect you. From people and things that are going to hurt you… so no more seeing those boys. You are so grounded. Not just that but you’re not allowed to use your phone or laptop without me in the room. All starting right now.” She picks up my computer and then extends her hand for my phone. She puts it in her pocket and storms out of the room. I lie back on my bed, shaking. How the fuck am I supposed to be a teenager if I can’t even see my friends outside of school. I sigh and stare at my ceiling until I get to hungry to stay there.

 

March seems to bring the first respite from the constant frost. It’s still very cold but the fact that the ground isn’t white and glassy means the teachers refuse to heat the school. I sit, shivering in Math as the teacher hands out the final triangle exam to make sure everyone gets it before moving on. She gave me an exam on the algebra chapters on Tuesday. Monday I worked through lunch with Patrick until I got everything. It seems I’m actually capable of algebra. My teacher puts my result on my desk as she hands out exams to everyone else.

     A-. I stare at the red letter for about ten minutes in disbelief. I’ve never done so well in a math exam. Maybe mom will be so happy with it she’ll let me have my phone back. It’s a vain hope. I look around for Patricks eyes. I need to thank the dude.

     I bombard him after class. He smiles at me and congratulates me. “Thanks. But thank you, honestly! How did the geometry go?” I ask walking with him toward the next class.

     “Pretty good I think,” he smile modestly. He probably got an A+ as usual.

 

My mom was delighted. Not so delighted that every punishment is taken back and I can throw drug filled parties in my kitchen. The kind of delighted where she sticks my test on the fridge, phones my grandparents, and returns to me my phone. “You’re still not off the hook. No leaving the house, but I guess it isn’t fair on your friends to never hear from you. Especially after that boy helped you catch up and get an A in math.” I take my phone, delighted, and run up to my room to text Gerard that I am now contactable by phone.

     I come home from ballet the next day covered in cold sweat and dying for a shower. Adrienne has become a drill sergeant in terms of agility. I think she believes if she shouts “grace!” enough we’ll learn to not make a noise as we land. I text Gerard all the way back in the car and then finally after procrastinating sitting on the bathroom floor I send, _gtg take a shower._

     Just before I step in I see my screen light up _Can I join?_

I should not have looked at that text before getting in the shower. I’m blaming that for the fact that as soon as I step under the water my downstairs starts throbbing. I scrub my hair as the water spills down over me but I can’t stop thinking about if Gerard was here with me and the throbbing gets worse. I’m reaching down to relieve it when I hear my mom outside shout, “hurry up Frank it’s been ages!”

     I drop my hand from my own cock and wash the last of the shampoo out of my hair. I quickly scrub the body wash from my arms.

     I loosely wrap a towel around my hips and gather up my clothes and phone to cover my stiffness. I walk awkwardly across the landing and into my bedroom. I drop everything and text Gerard again. I dress and text until mom calls me for dinner.

     “So how was ballet?” Mom asks over meatloaf. “You didn’t speak in the car at all.”

     I nod while eating another fork full. “I’m just tired. It was a tiring lesson.” I take another bite of the almost cold chewy meat loaf.

     My mom sighs and eats her own portion. I put the things in the dishwasher and excuse myself to go to my room. “You can watch tv if you want,” my mom says as I walk out the door.

     “I have homework,” I say in monotone. I’m just trying to guilt trip her into maybe being less strict. She sighs as I close the door on her silhouette by the sink.

 

 _Want to come over?_ Gerard texts after a while. I roll my eyes at the phone. Its pitch black outside. I can’t believe I’m spending yet another Friday night alone in my room without the will to even turn on the light or close the curtains. It feels like I’m back in Jersey.

     _I’d love to but you know I can’t_ I text back. I can hear my mom come up the stairs. I pretend to snore, it’s midnight so that’s believable. She sighs and I hear floorboards and door frames creak. The house is new but has the feel that it’s been here too long already.

     _Why not?_

_Because I’m grounded..?_

_Sneak out?_

_If I’m caught I’m so screwed_

_If_

_Let me get my jacket._ What am I saying? Why did I fucking send that? Why isn’t there an option to take texts back yet?

     _YAYAYAYAY_

I pull together all my will to get off my bed and put clothes on. I arrange my pillows and a wig I for some reason have, to look like I’m in bed, asleep.

     I open up my window. It creaks loudly and cold air fills the room. I scoot onto the window sill and pull the curtains behind me. They blow back in the draft. I look down at the drive and gulp. My bedroom is positioned so one of my two windows is positioned just to the left of the garage roof. I check to make sure no one will see an all-black figure jumping from my window and shove the window closed at my back.

     I push myself to the edge of the sill and then lunge, full force, at the garage. I land with plenty of space and then slide down the cheap slating to where the garage is just above the wall separating my property from my neighbour’s. I roll myself over and very easily hop down onto the concrete, it’s slippy with dew and I only have my footing for a second before I fall onto the ground next to me. Well that was fucking sore.

     I put my hood up and walk down toward Gerard’s. He’s waiting for me in his front yard, a desolation of concrete, tarmac and dead potted plants. The love child of an urban and suburban dump. Gee smiles at me from under his own hood. It was drizzling rain.

    As soon as I walk in his gate he jumps on me, kissing me and holding me steady so the shock of impact doesn’t knock me on my ass. After Gerard seems to calm down he pulls me into his garage and from there into his garage. Our garage and basement is solely for storage but Gerard has converted his basement into a dark bat-cave where he spends most of his time. He shares a bedroom with Mikey so this is where we usually hang out.

     I sit on his couch-bed and he sits beside me. “I fucking missed you,” he says, turning to face me.

     “We see each other on school,” I grin. He rolls his eyes but we both know what he means and we both feel the same. In school we may be very obviously “an item” but even most straight couples keep it PG on the school grounds.

      I reach around to Gerard and kiss him with all the hunger a sexual contact starved teenager can. Gerard smiles into my mouth and I take that as an opportunity to bite his bottom lip lightly and tug on it.

     He pulls away and I frown. “Do you want to…” he doesn’t finish the sentence, his eyes gleaming.

     I redden and he suddenly looks concerned, like he offended me or wants to save me from his own suggestion. “You know I’ve never done it before,” I try to say but fail to be casual again.

     He nods and smiles, “We don’t have to-”

     “No I want to, just I don’t know what I’m doing.”

     He grins, “it’s okay,” and pulls his jacket, t shirt and vest off all at once. I copy him, getting momentarily stuck but not enough that Gee noticed, hopefully. He grins even wider, “Fuck, Frankie, you’re so hot!”

     “I’m actually kind of cold-” he cuts off my terrible joke with his lips on mine. He presses me against the back of the couch and I hold our heads close together. Gerard rhythmically moves his hips against mine and I can feel him stiffen and my pants tighten. I moan a little into his mouth as he moves himself against me.

      My pants are getting tighter and tighter. Before I find it unbearable, Gerard slides his hands down and undoes his pants and then mine, never lifting his lips. We break apart only to remove the rest of our clothes and fling them aside. Gerard looks down at my completely naked self and I feel exposed yet seriously turned on. His silhouette block out the bare bulb leaving a shadow of his naked body across mine.

     He kneels between my legs and puts his hands on my shoulders. He leans in to kiss me neck and then creates a path of firm kisses from my chin right down past my chest to my navel. I gasp as Gerard kisses right down to my cock but stops before he gets there. I moan in frustration and he grins up at me. _It’s much too early_ I think to myself as I get harder and harder.

     Gerard kisses his way back up quickly and then pulls us both over to lie lengthways on the couch bed. He lies just behind me and kisses behind my ear, “I’m going to top this time okay Frankie? Just the first time. Is that okay with you?” he whispers. I nod, I don’t trust myself to speak.

      Gerard smiles, pressing his lips into my neck as he rubs by back gently and then caresses down over my hip and across my ass. I shiver and he presses his hand down. I reach back awkwardly and grab his cock. He’s not as hard as me, I realise so I stroke him up and down so I’m not too far ahead. Touching him only makes me harder though. He moans quietly and then moves his hand a bit further across me and then with one finger he enters me.

     I gasp straight away and Gee pushes my hand away, rolling me onto my stomach. He reaches past my head with a free hand and grabs a tub of something, all the while moving in and out of me. I can hear him but not see him, all I know is he’s moving in another finger. I moan again and rock slightly back into him. He crooks his finger, hitting something in me that makes me gasp audibly and struggle to hold myself together. I’m so close and I know he’s only starting.

     All of a sudden he leaves me. Being completely empty causes me to arch my back slightly and lift my body upwards in protest. Gee laughs a little and leans down across me, rubbing himself off my thigh, “do you want me in you Frank? Is that it?”

     I nod and he moves directly over me. I feel him suck at a bit of skin on my neck then out of nowhere bite down and enter me. I gasp in shock and rock away but Gee is moving against me in rhythm now, each time pressing a little deeper. I breathe heavily, moving against him. “You gonna cum Frank?” he whispers in my ear, “You gonna cum for me?”

     I shake my head at first but that quickly becomes a nod. Just as Gee moves all the way into me I let out a long strangled moan, spilling all over the sheet. A flood of ecstasy runs through me and out my mouth as a gasp. My breath remains heavy as Gee pulls out and cums on the back of my thighs.

     I lower myself onto the bed, panting. I didn’t even realise I’d got up on all fours. Gerard lies half on me, half beside me. We remain there panting together for what feels like a long time, but a long time I wouldn’t shorten for anything.    

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yea... so...   
> Sorry for taking so long, I was at a concert then a party then a Halloween family thing... (the concert was fab btw). I'm sorry if the chapter seemed awkward or stunted in anyway, this would be my second time writing smut and my first time really trying so it's just a learning curve for me. Thanks for reading as usual and I'll try update tomorrow!


	8. Eight

Mid-march brings a buds on trees, a warmth to the wind and good grades. I think I like March. I’ve also gotten much better at sneaking out so I think Gee really likes March too.

     My mom is delighted with my grades she lets me have friends over as long as they’re Ray and Bob or Patrick. Patrick, Ray, Bob, Brendon and Ryan even come over for a St. Patrick’s Day party. We dress Patrick in all green and act as if he’s an Irish saint. None of us know any of the St. Patrick’s legends other than he banished snakes and this bothers our Patrick so much he sits on my laptop researching it while the rest of us play Call of Duty. My mom lets us try an Irish beer called Guinness to celebrate the day and then disappears to an Irish pub with her friends Loraine and Debby, Ellie’s mom. Everyone goes home after a while and I ring Gerard off the home phone but he has to go pretty soon after to a party at an Irish girl called Aoife’s house. I spend the remaining time till my mom gets home sitting in my kitchen looking out the window at the darkening sky and our grey-green patch of garden.

     We only get a day off for the Irish holiday and then are back at school today, Wednesday. I sit in English and realise that I am pretty much the only person not hung over in the room. Even my teacher looks like she had a late night. Patrick isn’t in so I guess I’m the only one who spent what has become a national drinking day, sober. Fuck.

     The teacher shields her eye from the sun rising in through the window by her desk. “Today seems like a good day for poetry appreciation. And considering everyone pretended to have Irish roots yesterday why don’t we look at an Irish poet,” she says standing up and handing out sheets.

     “There’s Irish poets?” a girl called Cassandra says, sounding genuinely shocked. My teachers face falls in time with my own.

     “Of course there is you thick bitch,” a guy called Zack groans from beside her. Our teacher pretends not to hear him.

     “This poem is called “The Lake Isle Of Inis Free” by William Butler Yeats,” she says returning to the front of the class.

     Someone behind me raises their hand, “What does inis mean?”

     “It’s Irish for Isle I think,” she sighs. It’s going to be a long class I fear.

 

Gerard is grumpy and tired when we meet at lunch. “Fucking party,” he says pushing his dodgy looking beef casserole and his cafeteria tray. “Shouldn’t have one when there’s school the next day. I got two hours sleep. Two. And then I was still kind of drunk first classes but now it feels like a drill in my brain.”

     Gabe and Bert join us after a while with their own canteen grade healthy food. “I’ve got it in my locker will you get it off me before class, Gerard?” Bert asks before forking some gross orange thing into his mouth.

     Gerard nods and everyone at the table refuses to look at me with my raised eyebrows. “Oh fuck it, tell me nothing then,” I spit before taking a swig of water. “I’m really fucking sick of secrecy.”

     “What secrecy?” Gerard says placing a hand on his collar bone, feigning shock and offence. “He has my jacket that I left at the party!”

      _Lies, you’re lying._ I sigh and bite my sandwich. I’m not in the mood for a fucking argument.

 

My mom’s on the house phone when I get home, she must have finished work early. Gerard, Mikey and I walked home together, Mom kind of forgot I can still do that. Mikey told us a detailed account of his deluxe Beatles album. I close the door and begin to ascend the stairs. “Frank!” my mom calls from the hall. I sigh and turn around on the step and begin to descend.

     “Yea?” I answer, reaching the foot of the stairs.

     “I have a conference Friday in the company headquarters. I won’t be back till Saturday night and will be leaving tomorrow while you’re at school…” she’s hung the phone up and her eyes are measuring me for visible threats.

     “Uh okay. Will you leave something I can heat up in the fridge?” I say, for once acting casual is working. I have my mind trained on inviting Gerard over for three days.

     Her expression loosens slightly. “You can’t have anyone over. Well only that Patrick kid, he’s sweet. No parties. No drinking. No smoking. No going out.”

     “Yea of course. Can I have Patrick over though?” She nods.

     “Limited freedom Frank, I can take it away as easily as I give it,” her expression is serious and an eerie calm.

     “I know,” I say, a little harsh.

     Her face relaxes completely, “go start homework I’m making Swedish meatballs for dinner.”

 

Gerard isn’t nearly as excited about my free house as Pete. “We need to have a party on Friday!” he says smiling gleefully. “I can plan it, throw it and provide drink and you can take as much credit as you want!”

     I shake my head and make a “nah awh” noise. Pete looks heartbroken. “I’m on too thin ice with my mom. Can’t risk it.”

     “It doesn’t have to be big!” Pete says, dodging out of the way of the caretaker who is carrying a ladder. He ducks his head down so I can see him in the squares, “There doesn’t have to be many people!” He stands upright again. We’re making our way down to the band room. “In fact! It would be better the fewer people you invite. Make it seem exclusive. It can be us and a few others I deem cool. And your friends from Riverside if you want. We can have like thirteen in total, I’ll make sure it’s great and your reputation will soar!” Gerard and Gabe nod in agreement. “It can be, like, the six of us. Like four from riverside?”

     “Five,” I correct. I think I’ll invite Ellie too, if I do this.

     “Okay, five. And then let me invite like nine ten others and we’ll keep it a good small quiet party full of booze and music,” Pete is really trying to win me over.

     “Let me think about it,” I say shoving my hands in my pockets.

     “Sure! Let me know after school though so I can start organizing shit.”

 

I concede. I don’t know why but I do. Pete grins broadly and leaning against the locker next to mine begins to compose a text invite.

     “ _Hey guys my friend Frank Iero is throwing an exclusive party Friday night at nine pm. Bring your own drink but not your own friends because this is invite ONLY. If you’re interested RSVP me, Lots of Love Pete W._ How does that sound? And you can invite the riverside people because I don’t have their numbers and stuff.”

     I nod, slamming my locker. “I’ll text them now and tell you if they’re coming. Who did you even invite?”

     “Uh Josh, you know Josh. Mitchel, Lisa, Amanda, Stacey, Natalie, Ross, Harry, Kevin and Cho,” he says scrolling down through the list of people he’s just texted of the text.

     “I know like five of them!” I protest, walking toward Gee’s locker.

     “And the other five are really cool. Trust me. Mitchel is twenty one though and a great supplier of drink. Josh would kill me if I didn’t invite Lisa. Ross is Stacey’s boyfriend, Kevin is my cousin, you do know him and Cho is hot,” Pete says smiling at me. “This is a difficultly refined list, I could have invited like thirty more.”

     “No you couldn’t have. Thirty more and there would be nothing to invite them to,” I sigh.

     Pete grins and then bids us farewell as his lift just texted him.

     “So party at yours,” Gerard grins, throwing his bag over his shoulder.

     I sigh, “Apparently yep. You can stay over though,” I grin at him. He rolls his eyes but smiles back.

 

The first people arrive before nine. Ray and Bob said they’ll come for a while but Bob is driver and not a fan of social events. Brendon and Ryan couldn’t make it but Ellie says she’d love to come.

      Bob sits in my sitting room with Ray and me. Pete is sorting out drinks in the kitchen. Pre-mixing a lot of them and hiding two bottles of vodka he doesn’t want to use unless he has to. No one else arrives until about ten past nine.

     I answer the door to Mitchel, Josh and Lisa. Josh talks pleasantries as I show Mitchel to the kitchen with his backpack full of booze. Next comes Mikey and Gerard. Mikey goes in to the kitchen for Pete immediately so I decide to introduce Gee to Ray and Bob for the first time properly. “Gerard, this is Bob and Ray. Bob and Ray this is my Gerard, I mean… yea my Gerard.” No way to save myself there. Maybe pre-party shots with Pete to “loosen up” could have been better thought through.

     After that I’m just nonstop answering the door for ten minutes. When I walk with Ellie, the last to arrive, into my sitting room I find Ray and Bob smiling along to an animated story curtesy of Gerard. They laugh when he’s finished and turn to see me. They all laugh even harder. “What?” I grin.

     “Just telling them about that time in religion,” he laughs. Ellie turns to me with eyebrows raised. I motion to Gerard to relay the tale as I go into the kitchen to get Ellie a vodka and coke. Josh and Mitchel are still in the small kitchen. Everyone else is in either the Garden or the sitting room.

     Mitchel takes a small tub out of his pocket and opens it. It’s full of green capsules. _Oh fuck is that…_ “Hey Frank do you want one?” Mitchel says stretching his palm out. The tub is new, this is the first time they’ve opened it.

      I shake my head, “I’m okay thanks guys,” I poor Ellie and myself a drink.

     “Are you sure,” Josh says taking one himself. “These are insanely safe. Like pot only they’re pills and not even used medically,” he laughs.

     I hesitate. _No. No. Yes? Maybe? No. No._ “No maybe later? If you’re doing it again?” What am I saying?

     “Yea sure,” Mitchel says, he throws the pill back. “We’ll get you, yea? You and Pete for inviting us but we don’t have enough for the other ones, y’know.”

     “Yea I know,” I say picking up the drinks. Fuck, what have I just agreed to? Maybe they won’t remember.

      Back in the sitting room Ellie is sitting practically on Pete on my armchair. I hand her a drink but it seems she already had some. Mikey is talking quietly, awkwardly, to Bob. Gerard is discussing something with Ray and this guy Ross. I hand Ellie her drink and she smiles up at me and says, “That story about your religion class was really, really funny. I had no idea you were actually gay, no wonder Maddie couldn’t entice you.”

     “I’m bi actually, and what?” I say. Pete wiggles his eyebrows at me.

     “Don’t try tell me you didn’t notice. For the last, like, month, Maddie flirted her ass off with you. At first, she didn’t actually like you but in the end I think she did,” Ellie says, smiling menacingly.

     “What…?” I say, taken aback.

     “Did you really not notice?” Ray says, shocked. I shake my head and Bob smiles. Ray fishes about his pocket and passes him five dollars.

      The next three hours blur together in shots and red cups of various mixed alcohols. I’m making out with Gerard against my windowsill in the sitting room when we lean too much to one side and I accidentally spill my drink. “Awh fuuuck,” I slur. Gerard laughs and I laugh. He leans in to kiss my neck, “Geeeeee we’re in front of people. Let me go get more to drink,” I smile. He sighs and releases me.

     Pete and I leave to refill at the same time. He has a large hickey on his neck, curtesy of Ellie. I have one low on my neck, thanks to Gerard. We laugh and compare hickey size and who’s getting in more trouble as we leave the noise of the living room. It’s a cocktail of talking, laughing and Green Day playing at the max of my shitty speakers.

     Out the window I see a group of people smoking. Mitchel spots me and Pete through the window and beckons josh in after him.

     They walk in and say, “You up for it?” to me. I find myself nodding.

     “Up for what?” Pete asks, pouring unsteadily into his cup. Mitchel takes out the tub and Pete’s eyebrows fly up at me. “You’re into that?”

     “Well no. Not usually,” I say measuredly.

     “Your first time?” Josh says, surprised, “but you’re going out with Gerard?”

      “What?” I say. What’s that supposed to mean?

      “What,” Josh replies as Mitchel tips four green pills into his hand and then reseals the tub.

      We each take a pill and before I even realise what I’m doing my “shot taking” reflex knocks it back.

      It tastes like apple for the brief second before I swallow it dry.

      I pour my drink and wander back into the sitting room. Gee is talking to Bob who seems to be getting on so well with Gee and Mikey he’s forgotten to leave. Or maybe he’s waiting for those six cans to wear off enough to drive. If so he’ll be here another two hours at least. I skip over to Gerard. The floor seems too unsteady to walk normally. I pull him into the centre of the floor with me mid-sentence and start to kiss him.

     “Frank?” he says pulling apart, “are you alright?”

     I nod, smiling, “Very.”

     “Very alright?”

     I laugh, “Oh fuck, I just made a grammar mistake!” I laugh and then hush my voice into a whisper, “don’t tell anyone or my credibility will be ruined!”

     Gee measures me quizzically with his eyes. “You sure you’re okay?”

     “Yes. I’m just very drunk.” He lets it go then and the hours roll on with us making out. People go home in dribs and drabs until only the people who won’t be going home are left which includes Pete and Ellie who fall asleep together on my couch.

     I can’t be sure what happens next only I wake up beside Gerard, over my bed sheets, both of us butt naked the next morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so originally i intended there to be 11 chapters but that'd mean this chapter would have been part of the last one and yea, that would have been a long ass chapter.  
> Thanks for reading and leave a comment if you want, I appreciate the feedback :)))


	9. Nine

My mom is screaming bloody murder at me. I’ve never seen her have quite this angry. I understand why she’s angry, if I were her I’d be too. Even with my own morals and like mind I’d be pretty fucking pissed off. Like it’s one thing to have a party after she said not to but to find drugs…

     I had the house perfectly clean right. I had checked all downstairs. I’d taken the pack of cigarettes out of the downstairs toilet, I’d removed all traces of spilled drinks, I’d even run the tap for half an hour to get the smell of alcohol out of the kitchen sink, all with a hangover worse than anything I thought possible. The literal only place I didn’t check was her en suite.

     I opened her room and it was left exactly as she’d left it I’d just assumed no one was in there. But they were. There was ash left on the windowsill that smelt like hash and worse still LSD tablets left, wet and useless, in the sink. To top it all off there was half flushed vomit in the toilet. I could kill whoever was in there just for being disgusting.

     My mom had walked into the house pleasantly. Got a glass of water. Brought her bags to her room. Screamed in shock, a blood curdling noise which became my full name.

     I look up at my mom from the kitchen chair I’ve been sat in. “Do you have ANYTHING to say for yourself?” she demands.

     I shake my head. There’s nothing to say. I have literally no possible excuse to soften this. “Unbelievable,” she spits. “So unbelievable. I thought you were better than this Frank, I really did. I honestly have nothing to say to you,” she pauses her words but not her pacing, “What can I even do? What punishment can I legally inflict on you Frank? You’re already grounded, I can’t triple that. You are not allowed leave this house till you leave for good now. What can I even do!?” She has tears in her eyes. I know she’s taking this personally. Like a blow to her mothering ability. “I’d send you to military school. I’d send you to live with your grandparents, would you throw a drug party there?! How about back to Jersey? Let your father try to discipline you. I’m sure you wouldn’t try defy him! Oh Frank, how could you. Have I not been lenient enough? You keep testing me and it’s got to stop. You were never like this, is it because of that boy you like?”

     My eyebrows shoot up, “Gerard? What… Mom, Gerard has nothing to do with this!”

     “So you’re telling me he wasn’t here last night? Or at the last druggie party you were at? And the god knows how many before that!” Her voice breaks a little. She puts her hand to her forehead and turns to face the window. Her body shakes a bit as she leans on the draining board.

     “Mom?” I say, not sure how I’d even go about finishing that sentence.

     “Go to your room while I think up of a good punishment,” she whispers. I stand up slowly and walk upstairs to sit, frightened on my bed. I can hear her sob through the paper thin floors. After a few minutes I hear her dial a number on the house phone and start talking. I can’t make out what she’s saying, like at all. Only that she’s talking to Debby and her voice is high with hysteria.

 

School is odd Monday. Not in the way that it normally is, people being rude and bitchy and others being super nice while you get your lunch slammed to the ground by an apologising Canadian bully. Instead everyone treats me… oddly.

     I’d rung Gerard before my mom took my phone for eternity. He tried to calm me down but acted so vague and disconnected I flew into a heavier still bout of anxiety and then had to hang up and hand my mom my phone.

     Doubtless he told the guys. I don’t mind that, it’s just I hadn’t expected them to seem so… uncomfortable.

     I pass Gerard’s locker where he’s in a heated argument with Bert which completely falls silent as I pass. I don’t stop to talk, only walk faster toward my own, head down.

     I sigh as a bunch of random sheets of school’s official paper falls from my locker. Someone has my code and they use it for truly evil purposes, like stealing my protractors and filling my locker with random buts of special school stationary. I gather all the pages and hold them between my knees as I get out some books. I hobble back, pages still held tightly between my legs, and close my locker. When I turn around I find people staring at me. Maybe it’s all the paper I keep like a lover between my legs or maybe they all know. I could be paranoid but the thing is, what if I’m not. I guess that’s the paranoia of paranoia.

     I shrug my bag onto my shoulder and take all the pages up I my hands. Scowling at all the fuckers who are still staring, I storm off to the secretaries to return the papers.

     The odd feeling continues with my teacher returning our essays. I’d gotten a B- and a sigh. My head shoots up, “Miss… what?”

     “Don’t be rude Frank, put up your hand,” she says calmly as she hands Gabe his. I shoot my hand up, “Yes, Frank?”

     “Miss,” I gesture to the paper, “What… why…?”

     “Not your usual standard, spelling mistakes throughout. “What” is what I thought to,” she sighs. Mondays aren’t her thing.

     I scan the essay. I had spent ages on this one. Like an hour. I guess now I’ll have plenty of more hours of solitude to improve. I sigh audibly.

     Dave snaps his head awkwardly backward. “Not get an A++++++” he spits each plus carefully, measuring himself to avoid mispronunciation.”

     “Nope,” I try say casually. I never could act casually. He sniggers and says something vaguely sarcastic. I can’t hear him, all I hear is my own blood pumping and my vision fuzzes out. I put up my hand, “Miss, may I go to the bathroom?” My head feels like its filling with cotton wool and my breath is quickening. Some part of me says _if I don’t get out of the room I’m going to burst into tears._ I can’t hear the teacher but I see her nod and gesture in some way. I jump up and tripping over my own feet, run from the room. I hear people talk but it feels like im hearing it through a cardboard box.

     I burst into the bathroom and stand opposite the mirror. I try focus on my own eyes but my breathing is just getting faster and more difficult to catch. “No,” I rasp, “not having a panic attack.” After a while my breath slows and speeds up again. “No,” I say meekly before collapsing to my knees. No one comes in and I end up spending the rest of the class on the damp bathroom floor, knees to my chest, and breathing as if only my body mass in oxygen per second can keep me from passing out or throwing up or something.

 

Life is lonely. When you get used to being around people as often as I was, this solitary confinement is really quite difficult to take. I mean, I like being alone but there is a canyon between being alone and being lonely. And what I am now, with detention every lunch and a lift home after school, is lonely.

     The detention I got for not returning to English when I asked to go to the bathroom. Apparently the teacher is going through a tough divorce or something. I should cut her some slack but two weeks of no lunch times free is a bit unfair.

     I’m sitting in my bedroom, leaning back against my bed with the misfits blaring. My mom told me to turn it down but she’s in the shower now so I’ll play it as loud as I please. I refuse to look at the window, it feels wrong to be staring at civilisation and society from behind glass like some crazy old dude. My mom comes in to check on me often to make sure I haven’t escaped. Despite her freak outs I love

 

Thursday. Not even a week into my hellish, friendless days. It’s worse than Jersey where I just followed people I called my friends around the whole time. Doing homework at lunch times and listening to music. Here I spend lunch time in a room with incredibly tattooed twin girls and this guy who shoves as many pencils into his mouth as he can. I didn’t realise this is what he was planning on when I leant him my pencil.

     Thursday though and I enter room twelve just before pencil dude. The twin girls are sitting side by side drawing designs on fools cap paper. “Hey, what’re you drawing?” I say sitting beside them, desperate to make conversation.

     One of them looks up through thick lashes, “Mine’s an excersism symbol I want tattooed on my chest.”

     “Mine’s the zodiac sign for Cancer,” the other one says not looking up, “though it looks like people 69ing. We want to get it on our wrists here,” she touches her wrist, “If only it didn’t look so inappropriate. Even target wouldn’t employ us with sexual positions visible.” She sighs and starts again.

     I’m about to reply when the teacher walks in. He’s eating a cold tuna sandwich and drinking an extra-large coffee. “Quiet, put away the doodles, forty minutes will begin momentarily. No talking. No laughing. No phones. If I need to go into more detail, I will.” He bites his sandwich.

     Just as I sit back in my chair, prepared to stare at a clock until I go crazy, the door flies open. Gerard walks in with a sketch book tucked under his arm. He’s scowling till his eyes find me. He winks, “Am I late?”

     “Mr. Way, no you are not. Not yet. What did you do?” the teacher takes his slip.

     “Am I required to say out loud?”

     “I guess not.”

     “Then I will leave it up to your imagination,” he grins and walks down to the desk next to mine.

      “The time will begin-” the teacher, whom I believe Gerard has for art, is cut short by his phone ringing. He answers it and without a second’s hesitation is running from the room saying, “I’ll send someone else, I’m about to be a dad,” with more tones than I’ve ever heard from him.

     Gerard raises his eyebrows at the empty space where his art teacher had sat. The girls take out their drawings again and pencil dude begins his plight to fill his mouth with pencils. Gerard just begins sketching and I’m left with nothing to pass the time.

     After five minutes a teacher hasn’t appeared yet and Gerard passes me an elaborate drawing of a comic book character with the words _do you wanna skip school tomorrow?_ in a thought bubble.

     “That’s really good!” the girl who was trying to draw the Cancer sign exclaims, “Gerard, is it? Could you draw the uh star sign for Cancer for me?” She smiles sweetly at him.

     “Sure,” he smiles, leaning on and across me to get her paper. _This is not the time_ I tell myself and try to think of old women and cows in lingerie to keep my pants under control.

     Gerard sketches the thing perfectly first time, of course and then triple underlines the thought bubble. “Sure” I say and smile at him. A few minutes later a flustered Mr. Jordon. “Quite now delinquents, you’ve all done something naughty so now you get to sit quietly because that will somehow teach you a lesson.”

 

I meet Gerard at the front gates of the school the next day. I’m about to walk in when he appears out of nowhere and grabs my arm, pulling me back out of school. “I don’t know about you,” he grins, holding my elbow and dragging me across the road, “but I have this terrible flu, and I cant possibly face school.”

     “What a terrible flu, it’s highly contagious and I think I might have come down with it,” I grin as we break into a run, heading for the park.

     We sit and shiver on the hidden park benches. It’s only hidden because you can’t see it from the main path, it’s surrounded by trees which provides hours of shade. Gerard talks most of the time. We see each other in school but we can never have a proper conversation. Finally the topic falls to loneliness. I say a lot about living in my bedroom and he says that he hates it too. How sometimes he couldn’t even bring himself to leave his room and go skating. “I hate it but I, like, depend on relationships to motivate myself. I mean I don’t study or anything really. I only do when Mikey gives out to me about it. I had a therapist for like a month after I got really depressed and he says I need to find something else to depend on, but I don’t do music, like I can’t play an instrument and I don’t think I can sing, I don’t write or do shit like that. All I ever do is draw and hang out and if I can’t do one of those…”

     “Yea,” I mumble, “I get it.” We sit in silence and then make out, quite unexpectedly. I can here dog walkers pass as I lie on top of him and I hear disgusted grunts and coughs but fuck them, if I do one rebellious thing, why not do the lot.

     After a while Gerard’s phone rings and he jumps up, knocking me, dazed, to the ground. “Yea, yea, I forgot okay? Oh fuck off, I’ll be there in five minutes.” He shoved his phone in his back pocket. “Uh Frank, I’m sorry man but I’ve got to run, shit to do that I forgot about.”

     My heart sinks, “I have another two hours to be back at the school! Could I come?”

     He shakes his head and throws his bag up on his back, “no sorry.”

     “Could you tell me what it is?”

     “Too long to explain and I’m already running late. See you…” and with that he runs off toward the main path. My weekend of solitude begins early.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was my sisters birthday today so i was worried i wouldn't get to finish this because i had to make her banoffee and whatnot.   
> Only two chapters left before i can start on my new ideas :3 i'm excited to tell you the truth. Thanks for reading and I'll update as soon as i can, which will be soon because i have little else to do with my life :D


	10. Ten

My school puts on Easter exams. It’s exactly four weeks till the first one and at this I think I’m late to start studying now. Well by Patrick’s standards I am.

     “You haven’t started yet?” he gasps in astonishment as I talk to him during a free math class. I shake my head. “But you only have four weeks!”

     “I didn’t even realise there was Easter exams,” I explain smiling at Gerard as he passes my new desk. Assigned seating landed me in the very front but thankfully next to Patrick. Anyone else would make sitting up here difficult, even Gerard, Gabe or Bert. My new seat and revision themed classes reminds me of the triangle fun with Mr. Roberts back in Riverside.

     “Of course there is! Constant report cards is the only way to make most of the school work, you see,” he clears some dust or something off the table with the back of his hand, “I never really stopped studying since the Christmas tests really.”

      “I’ll just keep it up till summer,” I say with a strange amount of conviction. If my mom keeps up this punishment though it may actually happen. I never wanted to be that person who studies all the time. That’s Patrick. But I guess with my current house arrest it’s that or go stir crazy. I’ve already written loads of songs and can play every song by the misfits I have downloaded. It’s going to be a long eternity.

 

Friday my mom has a weird turn in her mood. She’s got a fucking date with a guy called Steve who works with her friend Debby. She’s insanely happy. She hasn’t been with anyone since dad so she’s putting in the extra effort. I get home from ballet, after walking all the way home, and she’s in the hall on the house phone in a towel and painting her toenails. I’m about to go upstairs when she raises a hand, indicating I’m to wait for her. I stand awkwardly in the doorway, bag heavy with books and study notes Patrick gleefully photocopied for me. People will never get it but he is a living legend.

     My mom paints her last nail and stands up, off the kitchen chair we leave there. “Yea, ten minutes? Okay I can’t dress till you get here! I know… I know it sounds nicer but you’ll have to see it, it doesn’t sit right. See you in ten!” She hangs up the phone and turns to me, gripping her towel. “My date’s today,” she states.

     “I know,” I reply, unsure where this is going.

     “So Debby is coming over to help me get ready and she’s bringing Ellie-”

     “Mom, you’re not trying to set me up with Ellie are you?” I cut her off, horrified.

     “No, no, don’t worry. I was just going to allow you some social interaction while I’m on my date,” she says frowning.

     “Oh my god you’re leaving Ellie as my babysitter!” I groan.

     “No…” she says taken aback with either surprise or guilt. I can’t really decide.

     “I don’t need to be watched every second of every day!”

     Her defences fly up visibly, “Well by the way you have acted, you do! Ellie is a nice girl and I have a feeling will be a good influence on you!”

     I try retaliate but all that comes out of me is a squeak of indignation so instead I run upstairs and sit in my room, sorting through Patrick’s notes.

     After about ten minutes a knock is on my door. “Yea?” I call, I’m not moving to answer it.

     It opens to reveal Ellie wearing a green day hoodie and a quizzical expression. “Hey.” She says taking a step in.

     “Hi,” I shuffle the papers into a general pile and move them from my bed to my desk, “want to sit down?”

     She nods and smiles. “My mom said your mom invited me over. Then your mom warned me you might be hostile.”

     “She did,” I smile, “I don’t really mind trust me. I just got pissy because it’s like you’re here to babysit me.”

     She laughs, “You’re small frank but not like young. I brought these CDs… they’re a small band from my sister’s uni, thought you might like them. There’s an EP and an album.” She puts two CDs on the desk, “They’re heavier than I am into. I’m still just easing myself into heavy rock.”

     “Do you listen to the smashing pumpkins?”

     “Not really.”

     “You do now.” I jump up and search for the album. Three songs in and Ellie is tapping her foot along and murmuring, “Oh god I love this,” and “whoa”.

     My mom comes in dressed “smart casual” whatever that is. Her hair is styled and her face is well made up. She comes in arms splayed and twirls around. “Whoooooooo go Linda!” Ellie claps and my mom beams. “You look amazing!”

     “Thanks Ellie!” She says smiling giddily.

     “You look great mom,” I say somewhat uncomfortably.

     “Thank you Frank.” She smiles possibly even more.

     “We better get going,” Ellie’s mom says checking her watch, “If he’s on time he’ll be there in twelve minutes!”

      My mom nods, smiling, “Thanks for giving me a lift.”

     Debby nods and ushers her down the stairs in her awkwardly high heels that make her look of average height. They call their goodbyes and wave. After a few minutes I hear the front door shut. I unpause the music.

     I spend the next three hours just hanging out with Ellie. We listen to music, I play the guitar, she plays my guitar, and we somehow end up talking about Othello. Her mom comes at half eleven to pick her up and we hug, saying our farewells and promising that we should actually hang out more. I don’t know about her but for me it wasn’t an empty promise.

 

Gabe doesn’t study. Like at all. He claims to never have studied before, ever. “Never?” I say astonished. “Never.” He confirms proudly.

     “What the fuck how?”

     “Gabe remembers all from his homework,” Bert muses, picking at his soggy fries. Lunch is getting of lower and lower quality. Patrick believes they stock the cafeteria every term and the closer we come to Easter the worse it will get. I shuddered at the sight of the food today and from now on will bring food from home.

     Gabe nods at Berts statement, “I’m no super freak genius,” he says, “I get good Bs and sometimes Cs.”

     “And As in choir,” Gerard laughs.

     “Shut up so did you until you quit it. If you didn’t quit it maybe you could sing better,” Gabe waggles his eyebrows and then bites his cheese sandwich.

     Gerard looks offended, he puts a hand on his hip and the other pointing to his mouth, “Excuse you, you little fuck, I can sing better than you even dream you could,” he sings in the tune of a soft version of Bullet with Butterfly Wings.

     Gabe look retaliates with a very pop, “don’t sing like an emo, you sound like whiny crap, bet you didn’t think I’d sing that.”

     Gerard gasps and the table laughs at the fact that Gabe is wearing more black than any of us and sang something hushed pop.

     It turns out none of the guys study really. Gerard and Bert do the high stress night before cram, Pete “doesn’t give a fuck he’s going to be a musician” and Mikey studies like the week before and still gets high Bs and As. I work my ass off to get the same scores as Mikey and Gabe. It’s just worrying, next year the guys will all drop down a math class and then try get into colleges without studying.

     I try bring it up with them but they laugh it off. Literally every time I see them in school for the following Monday I remind them to study. This eventually ends in Gerard telling me to “shut the fuck up he doesn’t want to”.

     I don’t want to tell them but I’m really worried about how few fucks they give about grades and I know if I do tell them I’ll be again told to shut the fuck up.

 

Baseball game; Riverside vs Pencey. In the hour running up to a full school march to my old school I saw three disturbing sights. One, the baseball coach following Gabe around the school pleading for him to play today. Two, I saw my principal supporting casual clothes in the school colours, white and yellow. Weirder again, I saw Gerard in a letter jacket of the school’s colours.

     “What the fuck,” I say gesturing to his yellow and white jock top over his Iron Maiden t-shirt and black skinny jeans.

     “It’s Gabe’s,” he grins by way of explanation.

     We march to my old school, all the way the gym teacher begs Gabe to play. “We need you, Gabe, we really do!”

     “Then give me an A in gym and geography,” Gabe says smoothly. I forgot the coach also teaches geography.

     The coach looks so distressed, “I can’t automatically pass you in geography! How about just gym, huh?”

     Gabe shakes his head and smiles, “Geography too or I’m sure the pitcher you have can throw many great foul balls.”

     The coach looks pained, “Gabe… Fine, yes. But you still have to do the exam and ill lift your grade two okay. So if you get an F you can deal with a D.”

     Gabe nods and grins. He joins Gerard and Bert who are walking in front of me and Patrick. I saw him walking on his own and Gerard seemed cool with it.

     Riverside’s baseball pitch stands in all its past glory only this time I get to sit in a different stand. I sit with Patrick to my left and all the guys to my right. When Gabe jogs out onto the pitch with the letter jacket now abandoned by Gerard, my friends stand up and shout abusive endearments like “Kick those motherfucker’s asses!” and “Gabe you brilliant bastard!” The teachers gallantly pretend not to notice.

     Gabe waves to us and bows before facing Carl at the home base. A coin is tossed and we’re first to bat.

     Gabe starts the game off well with a homerun.

 

At half time we’re leading by three. I catch Ray’s eye in the stand and beckon him down. Bob, Brendon and Ryan follow. I meet them down behind the stand and for ten minutes we just talk about nothing. I wish nothing had stayed the topic because suddenly we started talking about Easter exams and preparation. Ray and Brendon relay some horror stories about people losing all faith in education after their exams and about one girl who failed an Italian Easter exam and then didn’t get into med school.

     Thoughts of my permanent record float about my brain as I re-climb the steps to my seat. The file the principal held after I got in trouble for doing that kids homework. I know I won’t fail anything but I can’t say the same for the guys. I’d feel just as bad if Gerard didn’t get into college because of all the Ds recorded in that goddam file.

     I take my seat in a completely off mood and sit back as Gabe single handedly wipes the floor with the Riverside baseball team, eleven to two.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short(er) chapter this time. Sorry it took so long I wrote nothing at all yesterday because i got a new book i couldn't put down. I'll try update sooner!


	11. Eleven

I’m not really sure what happened. In school you catch corners of gossip. I have no access to phone or internet. All I know is my Gerard and Bert haven’t been in school for three days now and I saw a cop down the street for me. As is my nature, I assume the worst. The guys act distant. The teachers give less homework, which for the first time ever, I hate. I finish my work early and then get to spend the evening sitting in my room brooding on the possibilities, shouting “You fucking bastard” out my window when I’m pretty sure there’s no old ladies to be horrified, and let the window carry my voice off to the deserving.

     I ask Gabe about the whereabouts of my boyfriend and friend but he just uncomfortably says, “Shit, I don’t know Frank,” and then hangs out with his other friends. I ask Pete but he gets whisked away by somebody before he answers every time. I ask Mikey and he’s pulled away by Pete. It’s a loop and I’m not in on it.

     I spend an increasing amount of time with Patrick. Choose a partner and I’m left with no one if Patrick doesn’t choose me. I’d forgotten how horrible this feels.

     By this morning, Friday I’m just pissed off. I get group work with Gabe and two dim girls that could be twins, in English and for the first time in my life I refuse to engage with the subject and topic. I just sit, glaring. Gabe who is usually good humoured never tries to get me to talk, just looks concerned and nervous. Like he has something he could say to make one thing better and another thing worse. Probably because that’s it.

     But fuck it, Gerard can deal all he wants. He can be a huge druggie. Fuck, he can run an LSD factory where he enslaves children to work for him. He can get in trouble all he wants, I’m not involved in everything so I guess I’ll be involved in nothing now.

 

Romantic, the rain. You know the way the wet slicks people’s hair and tightens their clothes. In old movies people would run through the rain to embrace and kiss and tell each other they were wrong. In the rain cutsie couples share umbrellas. In the rain people did all that dancing and singing and proposing. In the rain people kiss passionately as their camera makeup miraculously stays intact. In the rain people see their lover through the grey drizzle and think “damn I would” or “that’s the person I want to marry”. All these are beautiful rainy day romantic experiences that probably end in someone getting laid. The scenarios race through my head as I walk, hood up, through the rain to ballet. My mom is working late so I have to walk there myself on a beautiful shower welcoming us to April.

    I would have loved a romantic scenario but instead I nearly got hit by a car.

    In the heavy rain it’s hard to see you know. You take a look down the street and unless they have lights on you won’t see a car until you’re kissing the bumper.

     I’m at the end of my street. My tracksuit is so stuck to me so tightly I feel like a twelve year old girl. My hair is slowly becoming a new layer of skin. My bag on my shoulder is heavy with rain and my coat is so water-laden it’s virtually useless.

     I look left and right like we’re thought to since childhood. I take a step out and I hear a car screech and swerve before I get yanked back onto the path. “What the fuck! Did you want to get hit by a fucking car?!”

     I turn around and look up to see Gerard. What the fuck… I blink rain out of my eyes, making sure it’s actually him and not my romantic fantasies making me see and hear things. When I confirm he’s real I shrug out of his grip. “Fuck off,” I growl.

     He drops his hand and takes a step back, eyebrows raised. “Sorry for just pulling you out of the way of a car. I’ll let you go back to bouncing off fucking steel.”

     I make a weird strangled sound. Gerard’s eyebrows raise a further inch, an expression of _what the fuck_ splayed on his face. I throw my arms up in exasperation and turn away. This time I walk up farther to a possibly safer crossing point. Gerard follows behind me, eyeliner dripping down his face and all black outfit stuck to him. “What’s your problem?” he calls after me.

     I stop and spin around. “What the fuck do you mean _my_ problem? You weren’t in school all week you dickhead! No explanation. Nothing! I see the cops at your house. I hear rumours you might get time? What the fuck is _your_ problem!” he opens his mouth but I’m not done, “I heard you make phone calls and shit and I saw you in alley ways. I decided to wait till you explained it yourself but you never fucking did! You never explained anything! It’s like I’m separated from your day job or something you fucking asshole. People told my mom bad things about you guys but I cover up and get a whole load of shit. People at parties say stuff about you and everything, so what is it Gerard? What part do you and fucking Bert have in the massive fucking drug industry in this town?”

     I would have continued but something about his expression seemed so hurt. “Drugs?” he squeaks.

     “Yes! Fucking drugs!” I spit and wipe so much rain off my face I could water an African village. “Why didn’t you even tell me you bastard?!”

     “What… Frank… It wasn’t drugs!” he spits the last word.

     “Stop fucking lying Gerard!” I turn away and start walking off towards ballet. Behind me Gerard makes an anxious, awkward noise.

     “I did take drugs as a sophomore. A lot okay. I was going out with Bert and we started going to drug filled parties.” I turn around in the rain. My whole body is now shaking with the cold. Or maybe it’s not just the cold. “One got crashed and everyone was taken in and we have an “underage drinking” on our records but elsewise we just got away clean. Except now we’re known by the cops to be affiliated with the people who are dealing. So there was a massive bust on Sunday and we had to give statements and shit.”

     I turn this over in my mind. True or not I take any possible relief.

     “Then what about the lane? Probably more than once! That’s a pretty fucking suspicious place to just, like, chill. The phone calls, the randomly leaving me while we make out, after you asked me to skip school? What about getting “the stuff” and all that fucking shit?” I demand. I’m going to be so fucking late for ballet.

     His face drops. Caught. “Um. This is… Okay… You know the way it’s illegal to drink and smoke at our age. Yea well myself and Bert got into a kinda bad business supplying people fifteen and older with it,” he scratches the back of his head. “Bert has an ID and I handle the uh customers. Making sure they pay. They’d usually call and order like fifty dollars of vodka for a party and I make sure they pay… We take a cut, so like if they give us fifty dollars, we’ll get them as much for that and keep the change. Sometimes I then put them, um, in the way of the drug dealers, if they want. I’m like that uh bridge or something. I didn’t tell you because… well…” he looks really uncomfortable in the rain with black-grey waterfalls pouring from his eyelids. “It’s not an okay thing but it’s how I afford shit. Like clothes and food and cigarettes and drink for all the parties. And um drugs…”

     I don’t know what to say. “I don’t know what to say.”

     “It’s better than dealing though.”

     “It’s still kind of dealing, only to like, younger people than I expected.”

     “Would you rather it was fucking pills?”

     “I rather you told me, straight away. None of this sneaking around bullshit where I get paranoid and worried to death you’d get locked up.”

     “You were that worried?” he half smirks, what an ass.

     “Oh fuck off I’m late for ballet.”

     “I’ll walk you there.”

     “No you won’t.”

     So Gerard and I walk through the driving rain. He tries to make his “source of income” seem better by calling it a public service and saying things like “don’t tell me you didn’t drink when you went to parties, age fifteen” and “I don’t tell them to, I don’t even offer to, they come to me!” The more he talks the more I realise how fucking ashamed he is and I realise why he was embarrassed to say anything,

     Doesn’t excuse him though.

     I turn up to ballet twenty minutes late.

 

My mom hears all the news off Debby that night.

     Ellie comes over and we complain and bitch in my sitting room as our mom’s gossip over wine. “You’ll never guess who was busted!” Ellie grins as she rolls the die. For some reason we ended up playing monopoly. “Harris Davies, you know the senior? Big guy? On the baseball team? Yea well apparently he was a big dealer, dealing to all the smaller dealers and he’s getting proper time because he’s eighteen. Chance: bank error in your favour collect £50. Yay!”

     “I think I remember him. Did the main person get in trouble?” I ask paying her £11 pounds for landing on her property.

     She shrugs, “Doubt it. The ring leader never gots caught. No one high up in the “chain” ever does. Only the little guys. That’s why it’s really shocking Harris got caught. A lot of people didn’t know he was dealing at all and that’s because he’s so high up. He wasn’t working for one group though. The pills are from here and distributed like nationally. People in the town know this but the FBI and government don’t.”

     “The FBI are involved?” I gasp. Not what I expected at all.

     “No,” she shakes her head, “”No, no, they are looking for the big group but this town is too small to be considered. Anyway the cops wouldn’t put two and two together after getting Harris. Especially because he had other stuff to deal too. Not just pills but heavy stuff.”

     “Like…?”

     “Cocaine, Heroin and Pot.” My eyebrows raise at this. “Like he had a little but more pills really. Don’t look so shocked you could get Cocaine and Heroin on every street corner in America and Pot in every other kids back pocket.”

     I didn’t expect Ellie to speak so bluntly. I guess she’s just really put out considering half her senior friends are fucking locked up.

     Ellie has to drive her and her mom home after two hours. No one had officially won the game but if it had gone on Ellie would have crippled me.

 

The next morning my mom is making pancakes for breakfast. Immediately I recognise this as a sign of either of two things; she’s hung over or she’s apologising. It could be both.

     I sit at the table and stare at the Nutella jar. It’s too early for me to even think about which it could be.

     “So I was talking to Debby last night,” she says dropping a pancake on my plate.

     “I know,” I say cautiously and begin smothering my pancake in Nutella.

     “Well she told me there was a big drug bust in town. And a lot of kids got in a lot of trouble.”

     “Yes?”

     “And none of them were those boys you skate with, were they?”

     “No they weren’t, they’re not in the drugs ring!” I can say this with conviction now.

     “I see. That leaves a big hole in the story then, doesn’t it? How did those drugs get in my bathroom? If it wasn’t those boys were they yours?”

     “Mom, no! It wasn’t just me and the guys some other people I don’t know too!” I bite defiantly into my pancake, “I don’t know who they are but it must have been them.”

     My mom obviously doesn’t believe me. “I knew one boy, Harris. The others were with him. He’s locked up now,” I lie. This is a good lie I hope, because what could falter? My mom is hardly going to ask him if he left drugs in her bathroom,

     “Harris Davies?” she asks handing me another pancake.

     I nod. “Why on earth did you invite him?!” she exclaims.

     “I didn’t, I think he heard I had a free house and came over with some other people who might have known my friends!” Lies, lies, lies, lies.

     My mom mulls this over. “I don’t know what to say to you Frank. Why didn’t you tell me in the first place?”

     “I didn’t want to get Harris in any serious trouble,” I lie. I don’t know Harris but I can’t turn back now. I’m going to have to write the details down so I don’t forget who I’m blaming.

     My mom turns this over in her mind and hands me another few pancakes. When I get out of the car at the ballet school I hope I’m leaving my mom to rethink the punishment. Maybe not unground me because I did throw a party and she can’t think I wasn’t drinking, but maybe she’ll stop thinking of my friends as bad people.

     I spend the time in the big mirror lined hall practising a movement which I wasn’t fully explained to me because I was so late. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoa guys I'm sorry if the last chapter made it seem like he was going to cheat. I'm serious that thought never crossed my mind xD I didn't realise it looked like that would happen wow   
> So here is the second last chapter :3 it really feels like it's coming to a close. I've spent a while on this theme now so it feels weird that i'm literally about to say the end and it not be a spoiler  
> Thank you for reading as always and i wonder if anyone has gotten into the story line half as deeply as me xD


	12. Twelve

Students cow Gerard and Bert on Monday. Asking them about the bust and the detectives. News spread pretty quickly that they were involved but I don’t think most people know why. Bert shies away from the crowds but Gerard stands like some sort of queen and listens to all the questions and answering them all with such vague statements like, “there were cops involved from the cities” without saying “the largest police unit in the state was dispatched to the town”.

     Gabe is still on edge with me but then Pete speaks to him and seems to relax, still not speaking though. Gerard would have told Mikey who would have told Pete who would have told anyone left that he believed would need to know.

     I still don’t know how I should feel about Gerard and Bert’s “business”. It is illegal but so is drinking and smoking underage which I do anyway… To say I disagree based on ideals or something would be fucking hypocritical.

     I guess what I don’t like about it is that he had a big secret with his ex and didn’t tell me until there was police involvement. I know it’s bad but I don’t think I’d even mind as much if it had been with anyone else, just because they were a thing. I try to shove jealous, paranoid, stereotypical teenage girl thoughts out of my head as I walk in silence with Gabe toward English.

     “Last week before the Easter Exams!” the teacher chimes, scribbling a sample question on the board about a poem we’d learnt, The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe. It’s a cool, dark poem.

     _How does the imagery of the poem effect the mood and tone? Use references to support your answer._ Very average question I have answered but on different poems. “You’ve got the whole class but If you’re not finished by the bell you may be writing to much as in the exams next week you won’t have so long for every question. You may begin!”

     I cast a worried eye across at Gabe who is staring out the window for a long minute before beginning to write down the question in red pen.

 

I have an idea. My mom is chattering away gleefully about Easter exams and another date and if I’d like a fancy adult egg this year. The thought comes to me out of nowhere and I cut over my mom without even realising it, “can I have an Exam study day.”

     “What?” my mom asks, a tone of confusion not even kinda masked in interest.

     “Can I have people over to study all day Saturday? And you can be right there!” This seems flawless to me.

     “Can’t you study on your own?” she replies poking her potatoes.

     “I can but the guys can’t” she raises an eyebrow waiting for me to explain. “Eh my friends don’t study, and I’m worried about them. They don’t find it important and stuff but if I invite them over to study then they’ll have to study.”

     “I see…” she eats a piece of broccoli, “Let me think about it. My date is on Friday.”  


“Please guys! It’s the only way I can fucking hang out with you outside of school.”

     “I don’t study Frank.” Gabe sighs.

     “We’re not even in your year,” Pete says for himself and Mikey.

     “I know, but you can still study! Guys we could get a shit ton of food and stuff pleeeeeaaaaase.”

     I didn’t think I’d have to beg. I thought it would be, “yea sure lets hang out in your place and get some work done cool cool cool”. I’ve already invited Patrick. I think he’ll keep us from getting off track and my mom likes him for helping me with maths. He said he’d love to but I haven’t told him the others were invited.

     “Whatever I will come,” Gerard says smiling at me. He is still subtly trying to have me forgive him. “I’ll even order a pizza.”

     “I’ll come too,” Bert says, from beside Gabe.

     Gabe sighs really loudly. “Have you learned nothing about the evils of peer pressure from Health Class,” he grins, “forcing me into something I don’t want to do. Something that’s against my principals.”  
     “It’s for your own good,” I laugh.

     “That’s what they always say and next thing you know you’re an alcoholic living in an abandoned subway in New York.” Every one laughs at his over the top reaction but by the end of lunch everyone has agreed. I’m actually going to have people in my house that aren’t Ellie. Maybe I should invite Ellie too… And Ray and Bob… Brendon and Ryan? I don’t know, this list is getting a tad long.

     Chemistry was scary. Apparently I have this folder I need done for 40% of my Easter grade and 35% of my finals. I love how I’m only learning this now. It’s just writing up experiments and I have a lot done but not all. At least a third left on top of normal study. Great.

     I sit at home that night and all I do is Chemistry. Literally three hours of writing out experiments drawing shitty diagrams. I’d love Gerard’s ability to draw things and make them look… right. The more I draw the test tubes the more they look like dicks and I just can’t stop laughing. My mom downstairs must think I’m insane bur come on, I’m saying to pour acid into the dick. Okay maybe it’s not that funny.

     I go down stairs for a glass of water and my mom is fake laughing down the phone. She’s received a call from that Steve guy at exactly seven thirty five every day since their first date. She’s hanging up as I return to the hall from the kitchen.

     “It’s getting weird, mom” I say walking toward the stairs.

     “What is?” she frowns.

     “I’m not sure if he’s just clingy or OCD or both.”

     “Excuse me?”

     “Every day he calls you, at the exact same time” I start up the stairs. I don’t want to make her uneasy, as I obviously fucking have, but the last thing my mom needs is some clingy man called Steve crying in our drive.

     I go back upstairs to draw more dick-like test tubes in unfortunate shaped beakers.

 

Friday’s ballet lesson is cruel. I have my exam in June but preparation has begun now. Literally each week till then we’ll be drilling two moves to perfection, for the grading. Today it is all about stance and the girls moving en pointe. I spend a lot of time picking them up and holding them too and by the end of the class my legs and arms are throbbing.

     Debby drives me home because my mom left for the date about three minutes before I left the dance school. “Ellie is at her friend Maddie’s house for a sleep over” Debby says trying to ignite small talk. I have no fucking idea how to reply so I nod and it goes silent again. Coming home was such a relief. I go up to my room and prepare study notes for tomorrow. I want them to look messy like I don’t care yet exist so Patrick can be proud.

     I take way to much preparation. I lay out snacks and gather spare pens and paper and flash cards. When I realise how orderly it is I hide the spare pens and eat some of all the snacks.

     I’ve decided not to go to ballet mainly because my muscles are tired. As much warming up and warming down as I did I’m still fucking sore.

     I’m too small for this shit.

     Ellie is first to arrive, groggy and hungover from a party at Madison’s. “I wasn’t even going to come, no offence, but my mom wanted to talk to yours about the date anyway. Do you have any aspirin?”

     “Yea sure one sec,” I walk into the kitchen and the two women stop giggling immediately. I don’t want to fucking know. I get Ellie an aspirin out of our kitchen cupboard while pretending to get plastic cups. Thank god for our unorganized cupboards and walk back into the sitting room. The womanly gossip commences the second I close the door.

     Gerard, Pete and Mikey arrive together. Then Gabe. Ray, Bob, Brendon and Ryan all arrive in Bob’s pickup. Then Bert and then Patrick arrive.

     “Want to start doing group stuff? A subject we all have?” I suggest as we all sit around my tiny sitting room. I can’t believe I have so many friends. Genuinely, it’s daunting.

     “English? We’re all doing Othello right?” Gabe says from a cushion on the floor. Everyone I can see nods, I’m on the armchair with Gerard.

     I’m never really sure how to study but Patrick almost immediately takes charge, breaking down the chapters and taking notes while everyone volunteers points. Well mainly me but Ellie has a very cool interpretation of the importance of the side characters that everyone writes down.

     When we’re finished English after like fifty minutes we split into different groups across the room working on math. Patrick ends up spending all the allocated time with Pete, helping him with some sophomore math.I go through the geometry with Gerard, Gabe and Bert. Triangle work will never leave me.

      After the core subjects we break it up even more with Gabe and Ellie working alone at one point because the rest of us don’t do Italian.

     We order pizza when we believe we’ve done enough. If I was to put two people together in new found friendship it would not have been Pete and Patrick but it is. They joke around and laugh at things I wouldn’t have found funny.

     Pete and Ellie exchange numbers and no one seems to care that me and Gerard make out while waiting for the pizza. We’re only half way through the boxes when Ellie has to go.

     Gerard and Mikey are the last to leave. My mom watches me say bye to them from the kitchen.

     “I miss you already,” Gerard grins stepping out the door.

     “You’ll be missing me more soon then,” I grin sheepishly, “We’re in different exam halls, man.”

     Gerard makes a distressed expression walking backward in the drive, “and then Easter?”

      I nod and he stops dead in his tracks. _Oh shit_ I think as he runs back toward me in my doorway and squeezes me into a forceful hug. I don’t quite know how but we start kissing. Mikey makes a gagging noise from the gate and my mom snaps, “Hey enough.” We break apart and Gerard starts walking backwards down my drive again, “You can see each other over Easter,” my mom sighs and reaches out to close the door between us. To me she says, “I don’t want to see my son sharing saliva with anyone on my doorstep okay. Don’t make me rethink the rethinking of the punishment.” And with that she goes to answer the phone just as the clock depicts half past seven.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The last chapter... It feels like i've been on this series for a while. Sorry if the end was poor it always feels like it is.  
> This chapter is very short and I'm sorry. I just feel like the last chapter was the end and this one is just tying up the knots. If you'd like to know, frank gets As in math and English and the rest you can decide :)  
> Thank you for reading and I'll get to work writing a new story soon :3


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